I guess I might be in the minority but I absolutely loved Brilliant Orange. I remember buying it and reading the first chapter and didn't touch it for about a year, then one summer just hunkered down and powered through it and it was completely worth it.
I haven't read a soccer book in ages though, in case you were wondering and you're OFT trivia is up to snuff, I STILL haven't gotten around to reading Puskas on Puskas. One of these days.
And Bergkamp's biography has been on my Amazon wish list forever too.
But I was thinking about how much I used to read about soccer. I still read about it, but at one point I was reading every shytty column on the Guardian by all those hacks, listening to Football Weekly every week, reading all the columns on SI and every Zonal Marking post as well as The Blizzard and random books. Now even thinking about doing that it's a monumental time waste. fukk was I thinking back then?
Now I just read the Guardian rumours column, whenever Barney Ronay or Rob Smyth write something and I skim the 10 Talking Points from the weekend and actually read the comments. That's all I can dedicate nowadays.
Anyway, the point is out of all the football reading I did, the one website that actually shaped how I think about football was Surreal Football (RIP). The writing wasn't very good, and they were essentially wums for their entire run, but they let me know to not ever take it so serious.