Hooper's Revolution. Dennie Wendt

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      The Unnamed Press

      P.O. Box 411272

      Los Angeles, CA 90041

      Published in North America by The Unnamed Press.

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      Copyright © 2017 by Dennie Wendt

      ISBN: 978-1944700386

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2017934027

      This book is distributed by Publishers Group West

      Cover Photograph of Trevor Hockey by PA Photos Limited, London

      Cover design by Meagan Tuhy and Dennie Wendt

      Typeset by Jaya Nicely

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected].

      Dedicated to my family.

      The author and publisher would like to extend grateful acknowledgment to the Hockey family of Keighley, England, for allowing the use of Trevor Hockey’s likeness on the cover.

      Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

       — Bill Shankly, Liverpool Football Club manager, 1959–1974

      I hardly even know what a soccer ball looks like.

       — Dick Walsh, North American Soccer League commissioner, 1968

      CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

      CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

      CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

      CHAPTER THIRTY

      CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

      CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

      CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

      EPILOGUE

      AFTERWORD

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

       PROLOGUE

      The New York Giganticos professional soccer team played for friends and family in the early ’70s, on a bumpy patch of grass in a high school football stadium on Long Island. By the summer of ’76 they played in the biggest stadium in the city, a baseball stadium, on a smooth, lush green lawn. And even with their big, beloved, beautiful New York home, they were too big for any one city now, too big even for Gotham. By 1976, they had ditched their “New” and their “York” and had become only the Giganticos. Like a band.

      The Giganticos, defending American All-Star Soccer Association champions, weren’t just the most famous soccer team in the world in 1976—they were the most famous men in the world in 1976. Nine of the ten best players from the 1974 World Cup had been signed by the Giganticos of the eight-year-old AASSA, as were the best players from six countries who hadn’t qualified. The Giganticos had signed Zaire’s best player and the Haitian who had scored against Italy and Argentina. Their names, said together, formed a Portuguese-Dutch-Slavic-Spanish-French-Italian-Flemish-German epic poem to the heroic and creative potential of the game. Virtually everyone in the team’s lineup was in the twilight of his career, finishing up his playing days while hanging out in the Manhattan club scene with fat paychecks, lithe European models, and minimal fitness expectations.

      With their expensive, decadent, almost comical roster—a confabulation of conjurers only America could assemble—the Giganticos traversed the planet like benevolent gods, vanquishing their opponents—and what opponents: The Giganticos went to Munich and Milan and Madrid... and they won! They went to Mexico and the Middle East and Africa... and won! The Giganticos went to London... and won! In ninety-minute chunks they won in Liverpool and Leeds and Manchester and Glasgow and then...and then... they circled the pitch to adoring cheers from the defeated team’s supporters. The fans stayed and sang and cheered just to be looked upon by the magicians from Brazil and Argentina and Italy and Uruguay and Holland, always Holland—how, how, how, the Russians wanted to know—and even the best from Germany, France, Belgium... and the Giganticos even had the best Liberians and Iranians who were magicians, sorcerers, geniuses too, but had never been able to prove it through their pitiable national teams. They flocked to them in the streets, surrounded their hotels, blocked their busses. They screamed for them, cried for them, clamored just to touch them, if they only could, if they only could.

      The Giganticos were owned by a free-spending Manhattan media conglomerate whose European executives knew what few residents of the United States of America knew in the bicentennial year of the republic: that football—soccer—was the world’s truest, most reliable, most incendiary, most tribal passion, and that the most beloved assemblage of humanity you could cobble together was a soccer team, a football squad—an entertaining, glamorous side that you’d love whether they were yours or not. The СКАЧАТЬ