Calvin's Nowhere Men uncovers the life of a scout while Alex Ferguson's two seasonal diaries (Will to win, A Year in the Life) reveal much detail of managing, as does Neil Warnock's The Gaffer (declaration of interest: written in collaboration with this correspondent). Very funny in parts, the Gordon Hill tennis scene is a classic.Īlso recommended: The Glory Game (Hunter Davies) took readers behind the scenes at Spurs with access no writer would get these days, though Michael Calvin comes very close at Millwall in Family. Even now it is a shock to read a substitute being secretly furious when his own team scores, because it means he remains on the bench. Intended as a year-long diary, it ends after a few months, hope having turned to disillusionment as Dunphy loses his place in the Millwall midfield. The first book to reveal how footballers really thought about the game. Only a Game? The Diary of a Professional Footballer, by Eamon Dunphy (1976) What follows is a list of football books which, if a bookshelf had only 10 spaces, would provide the reader with a library that revealed how, and why, football matters, and provided entertainment and enlightenment. Both events would have confirmed his belief that "what happens on the football field matters, not in the way that food matters, but as poetry does to some people, and alcohol does to others: it engages the personality". He would have enjoyed the spectacle and furore surrounding the launch of Alex Ferguson's latest autobiography this week, and the attention on the release of the shortlist for the William Hill book of the year. Hopcraft was also an accomplished screenwriter, winning a Bafta and numbering Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy among his adaptations. Football can make a man even more ridiculous than drink can." So begins Arthur Hopcraft's The Football Man, probably the best book written on the game despite now being 45 years old.
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