About the Book
For fans of Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham, this rollicking travel memoir by a middle-aged Midwesterner is a hilarious and heartfelt journey through the United Kingdom, its football clubs, and the rich traditions of English football culture.
Relegation, the devastating consequence English football teams face when they underperform, is something Todd Smith kept seeing in his own life. He grew up surrounded by soccer: his father was the head athletic trainer for the Minnesota Kicks of the 70s-era North American Soccer League, and Todd played into college. But while his family life was happy after that, his professional life didn’t go the way of his dreams. He spent two decades working tirelessly in blue-collar jobs while trying to break through as a writer. He often felt discouraged, like he’d never really made it, like he himself had been demoted to a lower league.
In Relegated, Todd embarks on a trip of personal and professional discovery. Looking for a change and a chance to write about something that really matters to him, he takes off for a multi-month, immersive expedition through the world and culture of English football. He visits not only the best clubs but also the most out of the way and forgotten ones. In these places, like the Old Spotted Dog Ground in East London, the port town of Grimsby (once voted the worst city in England), and Arbroath on the north coast of Scotland, he begins to understand what it means to be a “true” supporter of this historic and cherished game. He meets pub owners, groundskeepers, fan club organizers, and professional and amateur players who show him a deeper love of the sport. He learns how communities rally around a club, how much joy and suffering they can take, and how football clubs—even the lesser-known ones—can bond people together in memories that last a lifetime.
A heartwarming account featuring pints, meat pies, a rainbow of team scarves and banners, and some very colorful slang, Relegated is the story of a man looking to transform himself while discovering the true meaning of English football.
About the Author :
Todd Smith is the director of a landscaping supply yard in south Minneapolis, the author of Hockey Strong: Stories of Sacrifice from Inside the NHL, and the cowriter of Brave Enough with Olympian Jessie Diggins. He has been a longtime contributing writer for the website of the Minnesota Wild. His work has also appeared in The Rake magazine, Minnesota Monthly, and Twin Cities METRO Magazine, where he penned a print column and a blog covering modern manhood and fatherhood. Smith runs the Donkey Soccer League, a Sunday morning game for assorted nitwits and out-of-shape, middle-aged scalawags in Minneapolis, where Smith lives with his wife and son.
Review :
“This book makes me want to go spend the rest of my life in a pub with the tribal echoes of terrace anthems in my head, the smell of scorched microwave pies and stale spilled pints of bitter, the melancholy known only by people who hail from a dying world and love it anyway. Not despite, but because of.”
—WRIGHT THOMPSON, New York Times bestselling author of The Barn and Pappyland
“Relegated unspools like a mixtape of Wes Anderson, Frederick Exley, and The Little Engine That Could. God help him: battered, aging, ‘Todd from America,’ dreams of being a full-time writer. And guess what? His soccer scenes tumble out crisply, honestly, brutally; his characters come scruffily alive; some passages about bad weather are as good as anything since Twain sent Huck downriver. The against-all-odds shocker, Smith’s great victory, is the book you hold in your hands.”
—S.L. PRICE, author of The American Game and Playing Through the Whistle
“A beautiful book about the beautiful game, a tour that becomes a tour de force, Relegated is filled with warmth, dread, love, banter, and the million or so ways to make a family. Every page pulsates with humanity. Its siren song, sung from the terraces, will echo long after the final whistle.”
—STEVE RUSHIN, legendary Sports Illustrated writer and author of Road Swing: One Fan's Journey into the Soul of American Sports
“Todd Smith is the poet laureate of the overlooked, and Relegated is delightful. It's a story about soccer and life, love and joy, connection and hope, underdogs and also-rans. Like the clubs and cities and fans he lovingly profiles, Smith is impossible not to root for."
—CHRIS JONES, two-time National Magazine Award-winning sportswriter
"Smith reveals a fascinating world built on dreams, perseverance, and an absolute surfeit of annual heartbreak. For the soccer-mad reader in your life."
—Lit Hub
