How to Watch Soccer

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.

<< misleading title and messy structure but it's solid average read >>
First of all, it's pretty annoying that Goodreads has only one title option, it's How to Watch Football, not soccer. Gah. Now that's out of the way, let's talk about this book.
I started and stopped this book thrice. And after having finished it now, I think I know why that was happening. If you think reading this book would improve your football viewing experience, you're in for a disappointment. This book makes certain claims that it does not deliver on.
Rather than being a Football 101 book, it's an autobiographical account of Gullit's life where the fundamentals of the game are discussed through various aspects of his playing and managerial career. The anecdotes are very personal, and contextual to his career. This book requires a decent amount of pre-requisite knowledge about the game and the drama of European football. The characters or the situations are particularly explained but rather you're dropped in the middle of it. If you're aware of the key figures and their ideologies in the work of football, this is quite a decent read but if you're thinking of starting out, you'll be left quite overwhelmed.
My second issue is with the characterization. A decent chunk is spent with Mr. Gullit explaining his life and many of his “hot takes” are biased from his experience. The “theoretical” bits are a bit chaotic. The systems and style of play are covered in detail before discussing the positions. Certain portions discussing “the reality of sport” felt like a Sunday gossip column, certain reminiscence of “the good times” felt confessional.
I did enjoy the chapter on footballing cultures around the world and how the ideologies have affected the quality of the national squad, but again, I'd take that with a grain of salt. I felt like I needed to keep a skeptical view throughout the book, and that wasn't much fun.
That is not to say I didn't learn new things. I definitely picked up better insights on certain formations and got a gentle nudge on the styles of play. There were some random stories peppered around that I ate up like a juicy burger but overall I felt very underwhelmed by this book. It made heavy promises that it wasn't in the position to pull off.
Jonathan Wilson's Inverting the Pyramid is a better footballing book to check out (and Wilson is a journalist, not a player, so he tends to be a bit less biased).