Football Books: News and Reviews

McIlvanney on Football, by Hugh McIlvanney (1999)

HUGH McIlvanney is one of the best sports journalists to have ever graced the Sunday papers. This book represents a collection of his best football writing, spanning a career of nearly 40 years.

The book, at first glance, does not look all that large, but a second look reveals it to be a dense, 350-page volume of more than 70 articles mainly for The Observer which are arranged thematically, rather than chronologically. Read more…

My Father and Other Working-Class Football Heroes, by Gary Imlach (2005)

This book, a deserved winner of the 2005 William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize, tells of Channel 4 sports presenter Gary Imlach’s quest to find out more about the life of his footballing father Stewart following his death from cancer.

It is a superbly written and incisive tale of the relationship between a father and a son, made all the more poignant because the father is no longer there to speak out. His story is told through newspaper cuttings and grainy photographs, old programmes and dusty pennants – anything that Gary could get his hands on to discover just what kind of man his father was. Read more…

How Football Explains the World, by Franklin Foer (2006)

It’s probably unfair, but many people in Britain believe that Americans know as much about the beautiful game as the average baboon knows about rocket science. One man, however, has turned this theory completely on its head.

US journalist Franklin Foer has written a highly intelligent and, what’s more, highly readable account of how football has affected and often changed cultures and communities across the world. Read more…

Managing My Life: My Autobiography, by Alex Ferguson (1999); Revised edition published 2000

This much-hyped book was the major event in football literature the year it was published. No sooner had the dust settled on the trophies won in Manchester United’s treble-winning season, than this book appeared on the shelves aiming to tap in on the latest wave of people jumping on the ever-growing Red bandwagon.

Ferguson co-wrote his story with the distinguished Scottish journalist Hugh McIlvanney, so the writing is much more accomplished than most cash-in autobiographies – but a fact that grates is that McIlvanney is not credited anywhere on the front of the book. But he has done an excellent job of showing us a lighter and more humorous side to the dour man normally seen constantly checking his watch and fervently chewing gum in injury time. Read more…

Over the Moon, Brian: The Language of Football by Alex Leith (1998)

‘IT’S A game of two halves – and a million words’ – so says the cover of this book, which attemps to deal with all aspects of football’s terminology.

The scope is staggering – Leith delves into the history behind clichés, chants, team names, player positions, tactics, tabloid-speak, commentator-speak, pub-speak and much more. Read more…

Being Gazza: My Journey to Hell and Back, by Paul Gascoigne (2006)

This is a rather odd book, on the whole – part autobiography, part self-help book, though whether it eventually helps the reader more than the author is an interesting question.

Ghosted by acclaimed writer Hunter Davies, the book is made up of transcripts of Gazza’s sessions with his therapist, John McKeown – first in the rather stream-of-consciousness voice of Gazza himself and then in more formal analyses by McKeown, and every chapter ends with a short note written to Gazza from his fellow residents in the US rehab centre Cottonwood (along the lines of “Hey, man, you were amazing, you really made me laugh”, etc). Read more…

Barca: A People’s Passion, by Jimmy Burns (1999)

Jimmy Burns hopes that this book will be of interest to “readers who have never been to a football match in their lives”.

This is a tall order, but, just as with Barcelona’s motto, “more than a football club”, this aims to be more than a football book. It is the passionate and often romantic story of one of the biggest clubs in the world, whose stadium, visited by tourists from across the world, holds 120,000. Read more…

Abramovich: The Billionaire from Nowhere, by Dominic Midgley and Chris Hutchins (2004)

This is an investigative biography of the Russian rouble machine which follows the maxim ‘follow the money’ to show how he emerged.

It tells of political intrigues in post-Soviet Russia, the astonishing dash for cash of the new free market entrepreneurs reminiscent of 19th-century America, where the money came from, his decision to buy Chelsea, what club ownership gives him and the long-term implications of his takeover.

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Only a Game? by Eamon Dunphy and Peter Ball (1976)

Brian Glanville wrote in the preface to the original 1976 edition of this book that “Dunphy’s diary is…infinitely removed from the ‘ghosted’ pap which, with its endless banalities and disingenuousness, has so long been inflicted on us”.

But Only a Game? could also be called ‘ghosted’, as Dunphy collaborated with the journalist Peter Ball for his book. Here, though, the ghost-writer’s intervention is hard to detect – it is clear he has taken a back seat and let Dunphy’s voice tell the story. Read more…

The Far Corner: A Mazy Dribble Through North-East Football, by Harry Pearson (1994)

The telling words on the front of the 1997 edition of The Far Corner (shown in picture) say: “Forget Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, this is the football book of the new age”.

Bearing in mind that Fever Pitch was published just two years before The Far Corner, it is clear to see that new ages come and go with increasing rapidity these days, not least in football literature. This tale of north-east football from the grass roots to the glamour of the Premiership brilliantly satirises the glut of “devoted fan” books that inevitably followed Hornby’s book. Read more…