Firstly, I was disillusioned to discover that Inglis ‘work’ for this book basically involved turning up in a city for the day, taking a few pictures (BADLY I might add e.g. his snaps of Brabourne Stadium, Wrigley Field and River Plate's El Montumal) and having a brief chat with whoever happened to greet him at the ground. That’s all that happened. However, the net product of this graft would be an entire chapter based around the experience. Nice work if you can get it but because of the clear lack of research the book ended up being more about Inglis than about the stadia.

The only part of this book that I found acceptable was the Cuidad de los Estadios (city of Stadiums) which is four chapters devoted to the many stadia of Buenos Airies. Descriptions of each ground are kept short and interesting without venturing into the realm of absurdity, something Inglis clearly does in Chapter 12 where the entire passage is written in the form of a letter to the deceased Judge Roy Hofheinz (creator of the Houston Astrodome). It wasn’t clever and it wasn’t necessary.

But by far the most annoying feature of this book is the photographs of the grounds themselves. The few illustrations contained within are quite shocking if you have seen the glorious pictures taken in The Football Grounds of Europe. For example in the picture of Chicago’s Wrigley Field the ground itself features in only about 1/3 of the frame and the rest is taken up with a block of houses outside the ground.

Also Auckland’s cricket/rugby ground is an aerial view of the ground but it only fills about half the shot (the other half is taken up with housing estates). Now, I'm not a professional photographer but I wouldn't have thought it that difficult to take a photograph of a stadium that filled the entire frame.

All I can say is that Inglis job of touring the world cataloging stadia is what I would consider an ideal one. However I would rather have spent my time reading a book about the stadia themselves rather than one boffin’s misguided assumption that just because he finds his own career interesting that automatically we all will.

So just be warned that when you buy this book you will be getting a read that is more about Inglis than about Stadia.

In summary then this book is about one mans lifelong (career) and obsession with stadiums. Something which most men understand at some base level. He tells us various stories of his exploits around the globe in the pursuit of the perfect stadium. He dips into history, both ancient and modern, to underline the importance of stadia within any civilised society (and Spain). He meets with a mad Argentinean Jewish psychiatrist with a view to visiting an impossible amount of them in Buenos Aires in a limited period of time.

All the elements are there for me to really enjoy this book, yet I did not. What is even more disappointing is the fact that I cannot truly explain why this is. This book is relatively funny and insightful, yet I never really connected with it. My only explanation is that it does read like a really, really long magazine article. I do still recommend this book to sports fans of the world, but have my doubts if it would truly interest a wider audience. (Sorry!)