This book appears in the following booklists
in categories:Health & Wellbeing, World - Middle East, | When Friday Comes: Football in the War Zone
by
James Montague
£10.99 paperback Mainstream Publishing (2008)
While religion often violently divides the Middle East, the countries of the world's most explosive region share one thing - a deep and obsessive love of the beautiful game. Despite the rules being set down by the moustache-twiddling men of the FA in what could be considered the greatest imperialist document ever written, there is today a strong fascination with the English game, and a Premier League match can momentarily disable even the most militant jihadist.
James Montague travelled the Middle East for three years, observing the region's cultures and politics through the prism of football and interviewing all the major teams along the way. He soon realised that to understand the game there is to understand its people. For as much as football forms an unlikely common thread between different countries, the sport also reflects what it unique in the national characters of those who play, support and organise it.
When Friday Comes is an insightful and humourous account of Montague's journey, during which he gets stoned with the Yemini FA, harangues Iran's Deputy President at the World Cup, has a gun pulled on him by genocidal Lebanese football fans, encounters a rioting group of fanatical young Jews singing 'I'm West Ham 'til I Die' in mockney English and was made to strip and then dance for the Iraqi national team.
This is a compelling travel memoir that will enlighten, surprise and entertain football fans everywhere.
ISBN 13: 9781845963699 | ISBN 10: 1845963695
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