This book was underwhelming, overall. I feel like I've already read the best snippets on Reddit a hundred times (eg. Kolo Toure tackling Wenger in his first training session), and there are other books that better chronicle Wenger's time at Arsenal. This book lacked in structure, and certainly would have been better with a chapter or two on Wenger's final years with Arsenal.
I might be biased considering I write code to make a living, but I found this book to be pretty fascinating. I certainly feel a little more validated, as I connected with a lot of the descriptions of programmers in this book. I would definitely recommend this book to people who want to learn more about coding (as opposed to actually learning to code, which is very different).
Jay and Dan are my two favourite sports media personalities on this planet, so it's a little surprising I hadn't read this sooner. While a little dated (the book ends with them leaving for FS1; they're back with TSN now), it was genuinely funny and overall entertaining to read. It would have been better with more stories about Dan.
This was my review for Holiday's other book ‘Ego is the Enemy':
“At times this book feels largely like a collection of biography book reports and inspirational quotes, but I think the overall lessons contained are vital. Very easy to read, if a bit shallow.”
That about sums this one up as well, frankly.
They could have also called this book “How to Name Drop” because a lot of Ruud's insights happen to be something like “I like this player, who I played with / played against, because he does this...” It reads like an extended Match of the Day analysis about the sport as a whole, grounded by Ruud's experiences as a player and during his time as a manager.
There's only a few things I like more than design; soccer is one of them. I can't rate this book any higher only because they don't profile every team in the world's top leagues, and the provided summary of the team histories is mostly unnecessary in a book about the design and evolution of team badges.
I was really excited to read this because Manson's previous book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck” was one of my favourite reads last year. This book wasn't nearly as good. It has one great chapter about halfway through the book, but everything else failed to hit the same way. Ended on a bizarre final chapter about the inevitability of accepting our impending AI overlords like something out of The Terminator. Yikes.
I lived most of what I had read in this book, so I am a little biased, but it does a really good job of summarizing Toronto FC's history to this point. I'd recommend it to any new fans to get caught up to speed, I learned some things about our history despite having started watching this team religiously since 2014. I wish it covered a little more about soccer in Toronto pre-TFC.