Having never attended a sporting event in my life, I might seem an odd choice to review two novels based around football, but I’ve always had a fascination with the beautiful game. Among my favourite novels of the last 20 years are David Peace’s The Damned United, which captures Brian Clough’s uncompromising voice during his six-week stint as manager of Leeds United in 1974, and Ross Raisin’s A Natural, which explores the struggles of a young gay footballer in one of the lower leagues, when the dizzy heights of the top tier feel unattainable and publicly revealing his sexuality impossible.
George Harrison’s debut, Season, differs from both of these in that it’s not about managers or players, but fans. Two strangers, an Old Man and a Young Man, hold season tickets to an unnamed football club — all signs point to Norwich — and are seated beside each other for the 19 home matches of a single season. The Old Man used to attend with his wife, but illness now keeps her at home, while the Young Man has recently begun a new relationship which ebbs and flows almost in parallel to the fortunes of his beloved team.
Match results are rarely revealed for the novel is not so much about winning and losing as it is about the extraordinary importance of the club in the fans’ lives. The shadow of relegation looms large, not for fear of playing in the Championship, but because they know demotion could lead to reduced wages or even unemployment for those workers who do not have financially beneficial transfer clauses in their contracts.
Harrison’s passion for the game is evident but it’s how he draws out the personalities of these two taciturn characters that impresses most. For much of the season, they don’t even know each other’s names — “Why would any man need to know another’s name when ‘mate’ would do?” The Old Man, missing his wife, finds comfort in their casual chat, while the Young Man leans on their new friendship to sustain his troubled romantic and professional lives.
Season by George Harrison & Greatest of All Time by Alex Allison: A brace of novels that hit the back of the net
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In some ways, Season isn’t really about football at all, “a sport known for its cruelty and capriciousness”, but about having a constant in life and maintaining pride in one’s hometown, even when that leads to moments of heartbreaking despair.
Alex Allison’s second novel, Greatest of All Time, is closer in tone to Raisin’s. The 19-year-old narrator is a striker who finds himself drawn to a new team-mate, Samson, a French-Rwandan player destined for Ballon d’Or status. Despite competing for the same spot, they quickly become friends, then lovers.
The narrator is kind, thoughtful, talented, and likable. He’s also gay in a sport traditionally hostile to gay men and is forced to endure dressing-room banter almost exclusively built on sexual slurs. Close to his parents but struggling with his newfound wealth, the isolation of living alone in an enormous house, and the loss of childhood friends, he’s looking for someone to help him negotiate this unusual and very public adult life.
Allison builds a complex relationship between the pair. Samson is single-mindedly focused on his career. The pitch, he says, is his true home. He is black and resents the awards given to “pretty white boys” in England, hating the country, but giving all he can until the season’s end when he’s sure he will be bought by one of the big continental teams.
The narrator, however, is a homebody and one senses that he’ll be a player like Ryan Giggs or Paolo Maldini who spends their entire career at the club they supported as a child. Should Samson give him the sign, he might be ready to come out and accept whatever professional or personal consequences ensue but that sign, of course, will never come. Because for Samson, this is not a love affair; it’s just sex.
You don’t have to be interested in football to appreciate either of these books for they’re less about sport than they are about passion. Passion for a club and passion for another person. One reflects the importance of community in the minds of working men and women whose every year is structured around 38 games, rising and falling on a league table before finding themselves back where they started, on zero points, and ready to do it all over again. The other exposes the difficulties of being an outsider in a sport you love, where revealing the truth about yourself could cost you your entire career.
It’s midseason in the Premier League now but in literature, 2025 has begun with two novels that hit the back of the net.
- John Boyne’s latest novel is Fire (Doubleday)
