“I may appear fat, slow, and balding with two left feet and no ball-to-foot coordination, but I am enthusiastic.“
What this book is
Confessions of an Ageing Football Player is a satirical work of fiction in which an ageing man plays out the 2014 World Cup alone, match by match, using his old Subbuteo table, battered figures, and a lifetime of footballing memory.
Although football provides the setting, this is not a sports novel. It is a book about fantasy, masculinity, humiliation, and persistence and about what happens when the desire to belong to the game outlasts the body, the crowd, and the pitch itself.
The World Cup here is not being played in stadiums but being replayed in private — ritualistically, obsessively and with complete conviction.
Why this book exists
Football has an unusual hold over the imagination. It promises:
- belonging
- recognition
- tribal loyalty
- moments of shared meaning
For many men, those promises are made early – on school fields, in playgrounds, and in Sunday leagues – and quietly withdrawn just as early. This book was written to explore what happens after that withdrawal. By relocating the World Cup to a Subbuteo table, the novel examines:
- how fantasy becomes a form of care
- how repetition replaces progress
- how private ritual stands in for public recognition
- and how play persists long after competition has ended
The book neither mocks nor redeems this impulse. It stays with it.
The story, briefly
Under implausible circumstances, the narrator is called up late to a national squad for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. What follows is a sequence of “matches” that mirror and increasingly distort real fixtures from the tournament. Players are snapped at the knees. Figures are glued back together. Salamanders wander onto the pitch. Subbuteo rules quietly overrule reality.
Gradually, it becomes clear that these events are unfolding on a tabletop, with the narrator alone:
- moving the figures
- keeping the scores
- narrating his own ascent
- and holding the fantasy together through sheer enthusiasm
Victory arrives. So does anticlimax.
The tournament ends. The table remains.
Form and structure
The novel is structured as a football competition:
- group stages
- knock-out rounds
- quarter-finals, semi-finals, and final
Each chapter corresponds to a match, complete with scorelines that parody real results and outcomes that drift ever further from plausibility.
This structure allows the book to operate simultaneously as:
- parody
- memoir
- cultural critique
- and an affectionate demolition of football mythology
Tone and register
The tone is:
- exuberant
- unreliable
- affectionate and savage in equal measure
- gleefully absurd
The humour draws on:
- British football culture
- playground bravado and cruelty
- World Cup spectacle
- Subbuteo nostalgia
- and the fantasy of the late call-up
But beneath the comedy sits a serious question about who the game is really for, and what remains when participation becomes imaginary.
Who this book tends to find
This book often resonates with readers who:
- grew up loving football but distrust its modern spectacle
- recognise the fantasy of the late call-up
- remember Subbuteo as both toy and refuge
- enjoy satire that tips into surrealism
- are comfortable laughing — and then noticing what they’re laughing at
It attracts readers willing to sit with comedy that is also lonely.
A final note
This is a book about winning the World Cup without witnesses.
About replaying the match one more time, not to prove anything, but to keep the game alive.
And about what it means to remain a footballer — even when no one is watching.
Where to go next
- For obsession and fantasy → Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
- For effort and crisis → Confessions of an Aspiring Basketball Player
- For bodies and authority → Confessions of the Ageing Swimmers
- For spectacle and power → TABLOID!!!