I hate soccer

[peter falk]

The same author has a book about English culture/society and their style of play, but I didn't find that one as interesting overall. There are some interesting chapters at the beginning about anxiety around sexuality among young people, and how schoolboys were encouraged to direct that energy toward sport, though.

Winner's bio of Dennis Bergkamp is pretty great and one of the only athlete biographies I've ever enjoyed (along with 'I am Zlatan').

[erg79]

It could be that they also remembered the days of the Sounders in the NASL.

[Kurz]

Does the Bergkamp bio go into his flight anxiety a lot?

[peter falk]

I don't recall it going into great detail or psychoanalyzing him, but in one of the interviews that's interspersed through the book, Bergkamp talks about it having to do with trauma from flying on small planes at Inter and getting caught in bad turbulence all the time.  Until I read that, I thought he refused to fly because of that Surinam plane crash in which a lot of footballers died.

[erg79]

That might have been part of it as well, he would have known if not all, at least some of the players on board, and I could see that being traumatizing.

[Kurz]

Now I feel bad for all the ridiculing I've joined in over the years...

[peter falk]

I'm still bitter about it years later, after embarrassing Arsenal results away in Europe in the late 90s-early 2000s attributable to Bergkamp not playing/being fatigued from a 12-hour train journey (and/or Wenger's tactical incompetence) . . .

[Kurz]

It was always said he quit his international career for the Dutch national team after Euro 2000 because if he played until 2002 and "we" qualified, he'd have to fly to South Korea/Japan.