Have you ever wanted to experience Southeast Asian football? Well Antony Sutton has written the perfect book for you.
Support Your Local League: A Southeast Asian Football Odyssey is a 2018 book. Sutton talks about his footballing experiences while travelling through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
Sutton starts his journey with Singapore and discusses how their very unique football league works, along with some stories about special players that made their home there. He also covers the Singapore national team and provides a bit of history on their exploits.
Next up is Malaysia, where Sutton discusses the powerhouse clubs of the country as well as recounting a fascinating story of attending a match between a government team and a police backed team.
For Thailand Sutton explains how teams are backed by different regimes and the plight of those not backed. There are also several stories of attending games over the decades.
For Indonesia, Sutton goes all out covering the league, the big clubs, their runs in Asian competitions and much more.
Through the use of his own personal experiences, you feel somewhat invested in the clubs and stories that Sutton mentions. Sutton has a way of writing that helps you picture the situation quite perfectly.
The book is always broken down into sections for each country which is easy to navigate. The countries all have their own little sections too, which helps separate the various topics that are covered.
There is a large amount of information to be absorbed in this book, but Sutton does a great job of interlacing it with stories to make sure it is not too overwhelming.
Sometimes the references or jokes may be a bit dated but we can put that down to the generational gap between myself the reader and Sutton. They do not detract from the stories being told but if you are a younger reader they can be confusing at times.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it was great to learn about some of our footballing neighbours. If you have any interest in Southeast Asia, or football in general, then this is the perfect book for you.
It is for people who enjoy reading about football, as there are more than enough stories in here to entertain a football fan.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Featured Image Credit: Ben Johnston
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