I thought a book involving football, dysfunctional families, life in the office would be an interesting read. However this rambling narrative soon became tedious and I struggled to maintain interest in either the characters or their circumstances.
It was my first attempt at a Joseph O’Neill novel and I’m not sure I could handle another one.

Great fun, especially when you are a football fan.

Mark Wolfe is a Pittsburgh-based technical writer, but his heart is not in it. When he takes a forced leave, he visits his half brother Geoff in England who has become a not very successful football agent for promising talents. Geoff has obtained exclusive access to a shaky video of a young African supertalent called Godwin somewhere on a sandy pitch in West Africa, but it is completely unclear where Godwin is. Geoff enlists his smart brother as help as well as the old fashioned and chatty French scout Jean Luc Lefèvre (my favourite character).

In parallel there is a storyline told by Mark Wolfe's boss, Lakeesha, back in Pittsburgh and full of office politics. I found this less engaging and slightly long, but kept wondering how the two would come together.

O'Neill is a sportswriter and in fact I found the novel at its best when Lefèvre tells clueless Americans old anecdotes about the legendary Van Hanegem or Eusebio.

I am a little perplexed by this book. I have not read anything by Joseph O'Neill before but the premise of two brothers going to Benin to find the next Eusebio intrigued me, mainly because I assumed they'd encounter huge problems.

What this book is, however, is a strange mixture of two stories that seem completely separate until the very end.

Mark Wolfe is a grant writer for a cooperative and Lakesha is his boss. Wolfe's family circumstances are complicated in that his mother virtually abandoned him to the sole care of his father and then had another family which produced Geoff.

Lakesha also has a fractured family with deceased mother and a sister who brought her up but with whom she rarely interacts.

Wolfe's brother calls him for help to find a soccer genius called Godwin who is somewhere in Africa. So Wolfe, at his wife's insistence, heads to the UK where he meets with Geoff to help him out.

Does this sound very disjointed? That's because it is. The story continues to be equally strange with people dropping in and out of the action whilst we also discover Lakesha having workplace problems.

I didn't find any of the characters sympathetic or even vaguely likeable. I'm afraid this book gave me a headache trying to work out where it was going or what it was supposed to be about (apart from football having way too much money). I'm still not clear what I've read so I'm assuming it's far too literary or political for me to grasp.

Thankyou to Netgalley and 4th Estate/William Collins for the advance review copy.

This is the author’s fifth novel: his two previous novels “Netherland” and “The Dog” were Booker longlisted in 2008 and 2014 respectively.

And as the American based, Irish born author used (in the former) the unlikely device of club cricket to explore post 9-11 New York; then it is perhaps less of a surprise than it might with any other author that here he uses football (particularly the world of agents as a a prism to view modern capitalism and neo-colonial exploitation – but even so the other half of the story - set in the world American micro-politics – is a strange juxtaposition.

And its this story which starts of the novel – with the first party narrator Lakesha (her sections marked with L). Lakesha was a co-founder and now co-lead of a technical writing co-operative in whose rules and operations she is heavily invested (to the point that I wondered frequently in her sections if they were meant to be satirical – so for example "‘Now what?’ There was no obvious answer. Neither Pete nor Wolfe had lodged an official complaint, and the alternative–a proactive, topdown disciplinary investigation–was undesirable in our organization, which had a strongly horizontal ethos. We embraced the concept of decision latitude: as far as possible, individuals decided for themselves how to deal with the stresses of Group membership, including social conflicts. "

(Mark) Wolfe one of their members (co-operators) a charismatic, theoretically brilliant writer whose earnings never seemed to match his potential and with a knack for confrontation – most recently with Pete the security guard in the building in which the co-op is based; Lakesha suggests he takes a break from the co-operative.

The next “M” section is then by Mark – estranged from his three times married mother Faye (who he sees as little more than a gold-digger) despite his wife Sushila’s attempts to restore the relationship for the sake of their young daughter – he hears from her that his half-brother Geoff has had an accident and reluctantly contacts him. Geoff lives in London and works as a football intermediary (talent scout/agent): note that the author’s own brother is a Francophone London-based soccer agent obsessed with African talent.

Taking advantage of the proposed break and against his better judgement Mark (who as written came across as neuro-divergent) travels to see Geoff and even more against his better judgement is drawn into Geoff’s schemes. In particular Geoff has been given by a contact Cyril and in exchange for a chunky fee exclusive access to a video of a potential prodigy – a young African footballer identified only as Godwin. Geoff is convinced that becoming Godwin’s agent will transform his career and finances but wants to cut out Cyril and try to find the player directly. To facilitate this he wants Mark to visit Jean Luc Lefebvre, a now ageing but hugely well-connected French scout who he knows saw a prodigy in Togo recently (who Geoff wants Mark to discover if he is the same player). Although he is not Lefebvre than also gets drawn into the scheme – Geoff by then having lost interest due to another complex opportunity involving setting up an agency for Mauritian footballers – although he then appears to take it away from Mark who returns to the US while Lefebvre heads to Africa (and in particular Benin where Mark has deduced Godwin lives).

The Lefebvre sections in particular demonstrate something of an encyclopedic knowledge of legendary coaches, youth-prodigy footballers over the years and continents and African football: the effect is like reading a novel in the style of the learned World Soccer magazine and I think will be much more of interest to the well-informed football fan than the casual reader. I for example particularly enjoyed this comparison – not just because I have watched Ødegaard play in the flesh on a number of occassions this season (spoiler alert: he very much did reach the top), but because the way in which the link with Godwin is not just about age but about style of play.

"‘How good is Godwin?’ I ask the question with a delicious light-headedness. ‘Compared to the talent you normally see.’ Lefebvre drinks deeply from his beer bottle. ‘To the normal talent, I cannot compare.’ Just weeks ago, he says, Real Madrid signed a fifteen-year-old Norwegian named Ødegaard, who has already played for the Norway national team. Lefebvre has not yet seen this boy in action. But it is Lefebvre’s expectation that Godwin will be at the level of Ødegaard. … ‘Will Godwin become an important player? We cannot know, just as we cannot know if Ødegaard will reach the top. He is young. He must still have evolution. Football is not predictable; life is not predictable. But this one, Godwin, he surprises me. I am not someone that can be very much surprised, my friend. This one makes movements, makes passes, that I do not see in advance. If you watch, you see how he wants the ball, how his teammates always give, give, give him the ball, how he decides the tempo of play. He is like a conductor. He is teaching them about how to play. He is teaching me! This is very rare, my friend.’ "

The book then switches back for the second of the long L sections – this time she finds herself drawn into what is almost a coup within the co-operative, one which relies on exploiting anomalies in the constitution as well as imaginative/exploitative use of proxy votes: I must admit as much as I liked the football sections (for all Mark’s oddities) I found the co-operative scenes of little interest and again was unsure what I was reading (a satire of the Trumpian attempts to overturn the electoral college or the Democrats heavy use of postal votes – or simply an authorial interest in committee politics which I must admit I do not share).

And so it was a welcome return to the world of African football when we have the second long M section: Lefebvre visits Geoff and Sushila with a story of his visit to Benin – a complex story which sometimes feels like a story at fourth remove (O’Neill writing the first party character of Mark recounting Lefebvre’s story which consists in large part of the story of a Benin based tour guide who knows of Godwin and his family). That section culminates in Faye, Geoff, Cyril and Lefebvre all being involved (and wanting to add Mark) to a scheme to gain from Godwin’s talent – one which Mark and Sushila are only too aware seems exploitative bringing the football part of the story back to its key theme (one much clearer to me than in the co-operative sections): the contrast between top level club football as a game with rules, and its increasing status as a business with few principles and with riches out of all keeping with the background of the players it recruits (a contrast which is particularly stark in the unregulated, wild-west world of agents/representatives/scouts).

The two sections seem very disjointed – although Mark is a common element his almost obsessive resolution not to talk about his work at home, or his home at work – means that he is really very little of a link. A final section however does, following a rather dramatic incident (if one foreshadowed in references to Superga, Munich and the Gulf of Biafra) lead to Lakesha becoming part of Godwin’s story.

Overall – my conclusion almost writes itself in footballing argot – it’s a book of two halves.

My thanks to 4th Estate, William Collins for an ARC via NetGalley

Football fiction is a rare thing!
Two parallel stories running.
One, in the U.S. with Mark and Lakesha working for a co-operative.
Another, Geoff (Marks brother) a football agent living in Europe.
Geoff draws Mark into an international mystery tour, in help to discover a YouTube hit mystery boy, in an unknown location in Africa, who is potentially the next Messi and potentially their path to riches.
A worthwhile read.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6396126352

A wonderfully written and beautifully plotted tale of two brothers with so little in common combining their efforts in order to locate and sign an African young soccer prodigy.

The book drew me in as it described matters from different and conflicting perspectives and the ending was fitting and satisfying.

O’Neill is a gifted writer at the top of his form here.