Manchester
United Ruined My Life, by Colin Shindler (1998)
THIS BOOK is one of the best examples of the move away from Hornby-style tales of heroic football fanaticism.
This is not to say that Shindler is a part-time fan; on the contrary, he is as obsessive as Hornby about football, saying that, "Changing one's footballing allegiance is as impossible as changing one's religious affiliation". However, his own obsession with Manchester City is used to frame and hold up his life story; it does not blot out important events. Shindler uses footballing metaphors to illuminate his experiences; when discussing his invitation to train with the City players, for example, football and his Jewish faith are given equal balance.
It is not just football which informs events in Manchester United Ruined My Life; Shindler is a fan of Lancashire Cricket Club, and his accounts of supporting them further dilute the 'football obsessive' theme.
Shindler writes that his book is "about more than sport"; however, it is destined to remain categorised as a sports book, due in part to literary snobbery, but also to its title. Manchester United Ruined My Life is misleading in that it presents itself as an autobiography in the same vein as Hornby; it was billed, rather unfittingly, as "Bill Bryson meets Nick Hornby in this hilarious account of a man whose passion for sport defies all logic".
But the book surpasses the often petty rivalry of football, reminding us of the Munich air crash of 1958, when there was no "City/United divide". Shindler explains that, "Nothing better illustrates the despicable bile which has entered the game in recent years than the unpleasant song references to Munich chanted now by rival fans"; this ‘bile’ may have been partly caused by the arrival of the sort of writing which sees adherence to a club as more important than anything, even the premature deaths of talented players.
The fact that Manchester United Ruined My Life does reside on the bookshelves alongside this sort of literature hints at a marketing force beyond the control of Shindler; you wonder if his book would have been a best-seller under the general heading of ‘autobiography’, instead of it being aimed at such a captive audience.
Review by Sam Hawcroft