Relegated

“This book makes me want to go spend the rest of my life in a pub with the tribal echoes of terrace anthems in my head, the smell of scorched microwave pies and stale spilled pints of bitter, the melancholy known only by people who hail from a dying world and love it anyway. Not despite, but because of.” —WRIGHT THOMPSON, New York Times bestselling author of The Barn and Pappyland “Relegated unspools like a mixtape of Wes Anderson, Frederick Exley, and The Little Engine That Could. God help him: battered, aging, ‘Todd from America,’ dreams of being a full-time writer. And guess what? His soccer scenes tumble out crisply, honestly, brutally; his characters come scruffily alive; some passages about bad weather are as good as anything since Twain sent Huck downriver. The against-all-odds shocker, Smith’s great victory, is the book you hold in your hands.” —S.L. PRICE, author of The American Game and Playing Through the Whistle “A beautiful book about the beautiful game, a tour that becomes a tour de force, Relegated is filled with warmth, dread, love, banter, and the million or so ways to make a family. Every page pulsates with humanity. Its siren song, sung from the terraces, will echo long after the final whistle.” —STEVE RUSHIN, legendary Sports Illustrated writer and author of Road Swing: One Fan’s Journey into the Soul of American Sports “Todd Smith is the poet laureate of the overlooked, and Relegated is delightful. It’s a story about soccer and life, love and joy, connection and hope, underdogs and also-rans. Like the clubs and cities and fans he lovingly profiles, Smith is impossible not to root for.” —CHRIS JONES, two-time National Magazine Award-winning sportswriter “Smith reveals a fascinating world built on dreams, perseverance, and an absolute surfeit of annual heartbreak. For the soccer-mad reader in your life.” —Lit Hub

Todd Smith is the director of a landscaping supply yard in south Minneapolis. He is the author of Hockey Strong: Stories of Sacrifice from Inside the NHL and the cowriter of Brave Enough with Olympian Jessie Diggins. He has been a longtime contributing writer for the Minnesota Wild and his work has also appeared in The Rake magazine, Minnesota Monthly, and Twin Cities METRO Magazine. At Twin Cities METRO Magazine, he penned a print column and a blog covering modern manhood and fatherhood. Smith runs the Donkey Soccer League, a Sunday morning game for assorted nitwits and out-of-shape, middle-aged scalawags in Minneapolis, where he lives with his wife and son.