Review by Booklist Review
Watford Football Club was in desperate need of a miracle. The team had been cellar dwellers in their division for years, and their loyal fan base was dwindling, when musician and football fan Elton John purchased the team in 1976. The move was greeted with skepticism, the team considered a lost cause. John was a fan of the underdog though, and believed that the team would flourish under the right leader. Graham Taylor grew up with the spirit of a footballer coursing through his veins. He played for 10 years, until a hip injury forced him off the pitch. He took a job coaching Lincoln City and turned the team around, catching the attention of John, who offered him the coaching position at Watford. Both men faced an uphill climb, but success, it turned out, was not far in the distance. Watford Forever is a wonderfully charming book about how destiny united two relative strangers who forged a lasting working relationship and later, a friendship, cemented by their love of the game. Sure to appeal to Ted Lasso fans, Preston's book functions as a dual biography of John and Taylor as well as a window into the much-beloved environment of English football.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Elton John granted journalist Preston (Fall) access to his personal archives for this stirring chronicle of how the musician turned the Watford Football Club's fortunes around after buying the team in 1976. Watford was languishing in the Fourth Division at the time, but John used his deep pockets to hire up-and-coming manager Graham Taylor. A buttoned-up traditionalist who didn't care for rock music, Taylor appeared to be John's polar opposite, but the two developed a close friendship grounded in their shared conviction that soccer should be above all entertaining. This led Taylor to favor an aggressive style of play that pushed Watford to "attack the whole time... running the opposition ragged and harrying them into making mistakes." By 1982, the club had fought their way to the First Division, where they remained until Taylor left in 1987. Feeling that "things just weren't the same," John sold Watford by the end of the year. Preston skillfully spins Watford's ascent into a rousing underdog story, and his access to John reveals a more intimate side of the pop star (John recalls envying Taylor's domestic life, which was more stable than his turbulent upbringing or his globe-trotting adulthood). This will have readers cheering. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Affectionately rough-and-tumble portrait of a small-town British soccer team. Like much of England in the mid-1970s, Watford, a nondescript suburb, was in terrible shape. "Its workforce had been decimated by factory closures, its heart torn out by idiotic town-planning and its identity subsumed in London's never-ending sprawl," writes former Sunday Telegraph journalist Preston. Its soccer team, Watford FC, was just as hangdog, "a bunch of complete no-hopers." Enter Elton John, who, climbing to the height of his fame, bought the club in 1976, despite warnings that it would all end in tears. The team had a few good players but none of the vision that can guide a squad to victory, and there John's mounds of pounds came in handy. The following year, he brought a winning manager into the picture in the person of the steady, evenhanded Graham Taylor, who once told the struggling lads that in the second half they "should just give it everything they had, playing without fear and always looking to attack," adding, "You never know where it might take you." Taylor's understated faith in his players took them to unexpected heights, the stuff of which inspirational sports films are made. There's a pointed morality tale running through the narrative, for, as Preston notes, the U.S. has no shortage of little towns that "seem somehow to have fallen off the map" and just need a shot in the arm to come around. Alas, all it takes is a sufficient number of civic-minded millionaires. As for Elton John, Preston does a skillfully understated job himself of bringing psychobiography into play in his exploration of what prompted the tormented star to buy the club in the first place. A real-life Ted Lasso tale of a perennial underdog sparked to life--and fans of Sir Elton will enjoy it, too. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
