Good books about football

I went 50+ without caring about this game but for the past two years it's nearly the only sport I watch (La Liga, mostly). I don't weigh in on this board b/c I have no idea what I'm talking about. Recommendations appreciated.

Don't watch football at all, but a couple I read and enjoyed: Marshall Fisher's Seventeen and Oh: Miami, 1972, and the NFL's Only Perfect Season and Jeff Pearlman's Football for a Buck, about the USFL.

Take the italics off those last three words...

(he means football as in soccer)

I'm not very well versed in overall histories, international surveys or recent studies, but I've enjoyed all these:

The Football Man: People and Passions in Soccer by Arthur Hopcraft (who also wrote the TV adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
4-2 by David Thomson (autobiographical account of the 1966 World Cup Final by a writer better known for his books about film)
The Unfortunates by B S Johnson (experimental novel in sections that includes an account of a football match at Nottingham Forest's City Ground)
Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy (first warts and all account of the English game from the perspective of a professional footballer and future U2 biographer)
The Glory Game by Hunter Davies (Beatles biographer given full access to Tottenham Hotspur in the early 1970s)
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (as an Arsenal fan myself, I lapped up this book when it first appeared, and it genuinely captured a moment, whatever horrors came in its wake)
All Played Out: The Full Story of Italia '90 by Pete Davies (Gazza's tears, etc)
The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss (dumb yank true crime writer enjoys the unlikely success of a minor Italian football team)
Left Foot Forward by Gary Nelson (the professional life of a lower league football player, wonderfully unglamorous)
The Game of Our Lives by David Goldblatt (excellent account of 'The meaning and making of English football', and a more 'modern' book than most on this list)
Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Soccer Tactics by Jonathan Wilson (whose Brian Clough biography, Nobody Ever Says Thank You, is perhaps the best look at one of English football's biggest personalities - see also David Peace's The Damned United novel)
Panini Football Sticker Collections 1978-1985 (lots of collectible ephemera associated with football - football cigarette cards, bubble gum cards, World Cup coins (given away in petrol stations!), football programs etc etc)
The Heyday of the Football Annual by Ian Preece & Doug Cheeseman (nicely illustrated/designed survey of the UK yearly hardback books that were mainly aimed at younger supporters, often spun off from popular weekly football mags like Shoot!)
Rock'n'Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League by Ian Plenderleith
The First Eleven: When Saturday Comes issues 1-11 (I don't know of a decent book on the whole football fanzine phenomenon in Britain, but this handy anthology preserves the fanzine beginnings of 'the half decent football magazine')

Oops.

It's been years since I read books about football, but I also enjoyed

Stamping Grounds: Liechtenstein's Quest for the World Cup by Charley Connelley
There's Only One Red Army by Eamonn Sweeney