The Nowhere Men

November 15, 2014
Given the extraordinary sums of money paid to soccer players who ply their trade at the highest levels, you'd think the men (and it is almost exclusively men) who help discover, sign, and sometimes even nurture them would see some of that money trickle down. It doesn't. Calvin, a versatile and award-winning British sportswriter, logged many miles with scouts to learn their trade and what makes them tick. The hours are brutal, the pay is often pathetic (many work merely for expenses), but the men all have one thing in common: a fascination with finding talent. Good scouts, after all, don't watch games, but players. Calvin profiles a profession in crisis, with old-school scouts under threat from Moneyball-inspired number crunchers, yet some of the Nowhere Men almost seem as though they would pay to keep working. Extended passages of insider dialogue and an assumed knowledge of the various leagues and levels of British soccer will limit the U.S. audience, but readers who love sports stories from far afield could find this fascinating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)