Mark B
Member
- Country
USA
Review of The Team That Could Have Been (The Rise and Fall of Crystal Palace’s Team of the 80s) by Stephen Brandt
The Team That Could Have Been by Stephen Brandt is a book that, at least in concept, should have been a fascinating story for anyone interested in Crystal Palace, football history, and the players and circumstances surrounding the club during an important period in the history of Crystal Palace. Unfortunately, I came away from the book feeling that the story I was most interested in—the story of Crystal Palace itself—was often pushed into the background and instead I was reading the story of racism in South London in the 1970s and 80s through the lens of an American who had never actually been there or interviewed anyone who live there during that time.
My biggest criticism is the amount of attention given to racism and the civil rights movement. There is no question that these subjects are important, and there is no question that they have a place in the story Brandt is trying to tell. The history of football cannot be separated from the wider social and racial issues of the time, particularly when discussing Black players and the barriers they faced. Those issues deserve to be acknowledged and explored. My problem was the balance and focus on the book. Rather than using that historical context to help explain Crystal Palace and the development of the team, the book often seemed to make racism and civil rights the central story, with Crystal Palace functioning almost as a supporting character.
That was not what I was hoping to get from a book with this subject. I wanted to understand more about the club, the team, the players, the football being played, the personalities involved, and what made this particular group of players potentially so significant. I wanted to know what was happening at Crystal Palace itself and why this team represented something important in the club's history. Too often, however, the narrative moves away from those questions and into broader discussions of American and British racial history and the civil rights era.
Again, none of that history is irrelevant. In fact, it could have made the book considerably stronger if it had been more tightly connected to the Palace story. The problem is that the connections frequently felt less developed than they could have been. I would have preferred to see the historical context woven into a much deeper examination of the players and the club rather than having the historical material sometimes dominate the narrative. If you buy a book on Palace, you want it to be about Palace and not a book on racism that has a Crystal Palace bumper sticker on it and nothing else.
The other major weakness for me was the depth of the research and discussion. While there is clearly information here, I often felt that Brandt was telling me about events rather than really taking me into them. A good historical sports book should ideally give the reader a sense of discovery. It should uncover details that make you look at familiar events, players, or teams in a new way. It should make you feel that the author has dug through contemporary newspapers, club records, interviews, biographies, archives, and personal accounts to uncover something that isn't readily available elsewhere.
I didn't consistently get that feeling from this book. At times, the research felt surprisingly superficial. Some of the material gave me the impression that Brandt had gathered basic information from readily available sources—almost as if he had started with Wikipedia and then built the narrative outward from there. Obviously, I don't know exactly what sources were used in researching the book, so I don't mean that as a literal description of his research process. Rather, it is a description of how the finished book felt to me as a reader. I rarely felt that I was being given a deep, original insight into the people or events being discussed.
That is particularly disappointing because the subject seems to offer so many opportunities for deeper exploration. The players themselves could have been explored in much greater detail: their personalities, relationships, ambitions, struggles, performances, and experiences inside the club. What did their teammates think of them? What did supporters think? How did the management view them? How did their experiences affect the way they played and interacted with one another? What was happening behind the scenes at Crystal Palace? Those are the kinds of questions that could have transformed the book from an interesting historical account into a compelling piece of football history.
I also wanted more football. For a book centered on a team that "could have been," I expected more discussion of the actual football—how the team played, how the players complemented one another, what their strengths and weaknesses were, and why they were regarded as a potentially special group. The sporting side of the story should have been the foundation upon which the wider social history was built. Instead, I sometimes felt that the balance was reversed.
That is ultimately why the book didn't work particularly well for me. It isn't that the subjects Brandt discusses are unimportant. They are. It is that the book seems to lose sight of what, in my opinion, should have been its central character: Crystal Palace.
There is an excellent book potentially buried within this material. The combination of Crystal Palace, the players involved, the social circumstances of the period, and the question of what prevented the team from reaching its full potential is inherently interesting. But to make that story really compelling, I think it needed a much stronger focus on the club and considerably more depth in the research.
For readers primarily interested in the social history surrounding football, particularly racism and the civil rights era, there may be plenty here to appreciate. For a Crystal Palace supporter looking for a deeply researched account of the club and the team itself, however, I think the book may be disappointing. I finished it wishing that Brandt had spent less time telling me about the broader historical issues and more time showing me what was actually happening at Crystal Palace.
Ultimately, The Team That Could Have Been is a book about an intriguing subject that, for me, never quite delivers the depth or focus that the subject deserves. The story of Crystal Palace and the team at its center is compelling enough on its own. I simply wish the book had trusted that story more.
This is a long-winded way of saying don’t spend your money on the book, it isn’t worth it.
And as far as getting to know more about what made the Crystal Palace teams of the 1980s so unique, I’d ask people here to help fill in those blanks with their thoughts as it has to be more interesting than the book was.
The Team That Could Have Been by Stephen Brandt is a book that, at least in concept, should have been a fascinating story for anyone interested in Crystal Palace, football history, and the players and circumstances surrounding the club during an important period in the history of Crystal Palace. Unfortunately, I came away from the book feeling that the story I was most interested in—the story of Crystal Palace itself—was often pushed into the background and instead I was reading the story of racism in South London in the 1970s and 80s through the lens of an American who had never actually been there or interviewed anyone who live there during that time.
My biggest criticism is the amount of attention given to racism and the civil rights movement. There is no question that these subjects are important, and there is no question that they have a place in the story Brandt is trying to tell. The history of football cannot be separated from the wider social and racial issues of the time, particularly when discussing Black players and the barriers they faced. Those issues deserve to be acknowledged and explored. My problem was the balance and focus on the book. Rather than using that historical context to help explain Crystal Palace and the development of the team, the book often seemed to make racism and civil rights the central story, with Crystal Palace functioning almost as a supporting character.
That was not what I was hoping to get from a book with this subject. I wanted to understand more about the club, the team, the players, the football being played, the personalities involved, and what made this particular group of players potentially so significant. I wanted to know what was happening at Crystal Palace itself and why this team represented something important in the club's history. Too often, however, the narrative moves away from those questions and into broader discussions of American and British racial history and the civil rights era.
Again, none of that history is irrelevant. In fact, it could have made the book considerably stronger if it had been more tightly connected to the Palace story. The problem is that the connections frequently felt less developed than they could have been. I would have preferred to see the historical context woven into a much deeper examination of the players and the club rather than having the historical material sometimes dominate the narrative. If you buy a book on Palace, you want it to be about Palace and not a book on racism that has a Crystal Palace bumper sticker on it and nothing else.
The other major weakness for me was the depth of the research and discussion. While there is clearly information here, I often felt that Brandt was telling me about events rather than really taking me into them. A good historical sports book should ideally give the reader a sense of discovery. It should uncover details that make you look at familiar events, players, or teams in a new way. It should make you feel that the author has dug through contemporary newspapers, club records, interviews, biographies, archives, and personal accounts to uncover something that isn't readily available elsewhere.
I didn't consistently get that feeling from this book. At times, the research felt surprisingly superficial. Some of the material gave me the impression that Brandt had gathered basic information from readily available sources—almost as if he had started with Wikipedia and then built the narrative outward from there. Obviously, I don't know exactly what sources were used in researching the book, so I don't mean that as a literal description of his research process. Rather, it is a description of how the finished book felt to me as a reader. I rarely felt that I was being given a deep, original insight into the people or events being discussed.
That is particularly disappointing because the subject seems to offer so many opportunities for deeper exploration. The players themselves could have been explored in much greater detail: their personalities, relationships, ambitions, struggles, performances, and experiences inside the club. What did their teammates think of them? What did supporters think? How did the management view them? How did their experiences affect the way they played and interacted with one another? What was happening behind the scenes at Crystal Palace? Those are the kinds of questions that could have transformed the book from an interesting historical account into a compelling piece of football history.
I also wanted more football. For a book centered on a team that "could have been," I expected more discussion of the actual football—how the team played, how the players complemented one another, what their strengths and weaknesses were, and why they were regarded as a potentially special group. The sporting side of the story should have been the foundation upon which the wider social history was built. Instead, I sometimes felt that the balance was reversed.
That is ultimately why the book didn't work particularly well for me. It isn't that the subjects Brandt discusses are unimportant. They are. It is that the book seems to lose sight of what, in my opinion, should have been its central character: Crystal Palace.
There is an excellent book potentially buried within this material. The combination of Crystal Palace, the players involved, the social circumstances of the period, and the question of what prevented the team from reaching its full potential is inherently interesting. But to make that story really compelling, I think it needed a much stronger focus on the club and considerably more depth in the research.
For readers primarily interested in the social history surrounding football, particularly racism and the civil rights era, there may be plenty here to appreciate. For a Crystal Palace supporter looking for a deeply researched account of the club and the team itself, however, I think the book may be disappointing. I finished it wishing that Brandt had spent less time telling me about the broader historical issues and more time showing me what was actually happening at Crystal Palace.
Ultimately, The Team That Could Have Been is a book about an intriguing subject that, for me, never quite delivers the depth or focus that the subject deserves. The story of Crystal Palace and the team at its center is compelling enough on its own. I simply wish the book had trusted that story more.
This is a long-winded way of saying don’t spend your money on the book, it isn’t worth it.
And as far as getting to know more about what made the Crystal Palace teams of the 1980s so unique, I’d ask people here to help fill in those blanks with their thoughts as it has to be more interesting than the book was.
