Avoiding all literature speculating endlessly on Rooney's foot and promoting Crouch's pitiful 'dance' (any regular Premiership-watcher can tell you that it's no news that he's robotic) - my World Cup reading matter of choice is Those Feet; A Sensual History of English Football by David Winner, in which he
...journeys to the heart of Englishness and sheds new light on the true nature of a rapidly changing game that was never really meant to be beautiful. He shows how Victorian sexual anxiety underlies England's many World Cup failures. He reveals the connection between Roy Keane and a soldier who died in the Charge of the Light Brigade. And, he demonstrates how thick mud and wet leather shaped the contours of the English soul.