“Yes, it’s billed as a hearty tour of English football. But in its combination of naivete and hardbitten experience, wonder at war with failure, “Relegated” unspools more 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 “Playing Through the Whistle” and “The American Game”

“This book makes me want to go spend the rest of my life in a pub with the tribal echoes of terrance anthems in my head, the smell of scorched microwave pies and stale spilled pints of bitter, the melancholy only known by people who hail from a dying world and love it anyway. Not despite but because of.”

— Wright Thompson, ESPN

"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 sports writer

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