Synopsis
Fever Pitch meets Trainspotting in this laugh-outloud, caustic account of one man's attempt to coach a peewee soccer team
When Alan Black was a child growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, soccer—or what he called fitba'—was the be all and end all. His experience was not the little league, boys-of-summer stuff of modern America. For him, it was life and death. Now middleaged and living in California, Alan finds himself coaching a team of eight-year-olds in his beloved sport—and nothing is going right.
For a start, the kids are no good at soccer. Secondly, they're pampered. Born and bred on the sport, Black's hardscrabble Scottish upbringing consisted of playing tough and victory at all costs. Needless to say, his coaching methods are a far cry from the "winning isn't everything" mentality his little leaguers have been reared with; and players and parents alike are shocked as Black attempts to transform the losing team through drills and bombast. Alone at night, watching evangelicals on TV, Black finds himself searching for some truth in the culture he finds so bizarre. And it's with the Tigers that he feels most out of sync—faced with a mix of soft suburban children, a raft of overprotective parents, and an Iranian co-coach called Ali. Told with Black's uproarious Scottish sensibility, Kick the Balls follows the abrasive, irreverent, and hilarious coach as he contends with a team that winds up with a zero-win record.
Both a celebration of his own tough childhood and an account of one man's navigation of an alien culture, Kick the Balls will delight fans of well-told, laugh-out-loud memoirs.
Publishers Weekly
Black's sardonic view of suburban America and his propensity for saying the wrong thing to the wrong people may remind some of a Scottish Larry David, but this San Francisco writer and pub manager possesses a distinct voice and an aggressive passion for soccer: "Earth wasn't pigskin shaped, all the skeptics had to do was look at the heavens and see what God's game was... the perfect immaculate conception of our fertile earth was the soccer ball, soft and hard at the same time, delightfully floated, spinning with atmosphere and promise." Black ties in memories of childhood fandom in Glasgow with tales of coaching the eight-year-old Dragons, his son among them, managing bar and watching late night TV with his ice cream, Ben and Jerry ("I grabbed Ben and Jerry and marched them to the sofa"). Merrily skewering every target in sight (especially soccer moms: "The field was a big womb and their babies were in there kicking"), Black includes lots of fantasy, funny nicknames and fake articles from an imaginary newsletter, "The Sporting Green." Any suburbanite with kids in organized sports will find Black a riot, provided they aren't easily offended; readers may actually learn some new swear words.
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