Passion Pure: Football Stories from the New Millennium
About this book
Compiled from Charlie Connelly’s first three books, Passion Pure draws stories from a broad cross section of football, from Clapton’s Old Spotted Dog ground to the packed stadia of La Liga via the Faroe Islands, a third division apprentice and Roberto Baggio in Sarajevo. Football reached a watershed at the millennium. It was 11 years after Hillsborough and eight years after the launch of the Premier and Champions Leagues. In I Just Can’t Help Believing, London Fields and Spirit High And Passion Pure, Connelly searched out the game’s greatest stories as the millennium turned, from the earliest rounds of the FA Cup to the pinnacle of European competition. He takes tea with David Elleray at Harrow School, visits the northernmost club in the world and meets an ebullient chairman preparing to take his non-league club to the big time. He visits Turin and the site of one of European football’s biggest tragedies and shares the anguish of the man who captained the Hereford United side that crashed out of the Football League in the most heartbreaking of loser-takes-all circumstances. Underpinning these stories, hiding in plain sight, is the spirit of the game and the fuel that keeps players and supporters alike coming back for more, every game, every week, every hope. Hope is the rock on which passion is founded and at the turn of the millennium there was more hope at large in the game than ever before.