A kind of a dull rendition of an exciting event. Glanville provides a cranky, disorganized narrative of each World Cup tournament confusingly jumping from match to match and referring to players by last name only. If that's not bad enough he writes from a chauvinistic British point of view and uses pejorative terms to describe players from non-Western nations. I read through the whole thing anyhow - even though what little organization he had disappeared for the 86 & 90 tourneys - because it was mindless fluff and full of interesting little historical facts. Still, I can imagine a much better book where each Cup chapter has a short outline of each team with line-ups and stats, summaries of group play, second rounds, and quarter-finals (with sidebar boxes elaborating on 3-4 of the best games), more in-depth description of the semi-finals and championship games and lots of illustrations. ( )