I’m not speaking out of turn here when I say within the Oi Polloi building there are a fair few geeks. Good geeks though, let me make that clear. What probably unites us under the common banner of this here shop is our unhealthy obsession with nice clothes. Beyond that though, there’s a fair few for whom music is a passion that sometimes boils over. Then there’s the car appreciators and those who like a bit of travel. There’s even a chap whose collector gene extends to smurfs. It’s a broad church.
There are a few of us that work here who pay more than a passing regard for football, but as someone who can’t kick the habit despite my team being mostly terrible, I’m claiming King Geek when it comes to football. Fresh from a Tuesday night away fixture at Kidderminster Harriers, I arrived in this morning and invoked my own personal geek gene by digging into the latest issue of The Green Soccer Journal.
It’s unique in that it combines strong football writing with a level of photography rarely seen in the so-called beautiful game these days. From my point of view it’s a refreshing change from some of the more mainstream titles, both in the football world and those aimed at more aesthetic stuff like clothing. It’s not the earthy, fanzine style publication I normally read but that’s part of the appeal. There’s certainly no throwaway quality to it. More a ‘read it, put it neatly on a shelf then come back to it again’ quality, much like stuff like Inventory. For those of you who enjoy the finer points of football and fancy seeing them presented in a posh, uncommonly cool way, The Green Soccer Journal is for you.
This latest issue is the second and features two different covers from different generations of French football. Recently retired Patrick Vieira is looking dapper on one and on the other the new generation is represented by PSG defender Mamadou Sakho.
Take a closer look here.
