Which football books do you recommend??

[Norman Potting]

Reading the thread on "Build a Bonfire" set me thinking about footie books I have read which have actually been worth reading. So far they are:-

"Build a Bonfire" - if you haven't read it - why not? An excellent book, even if I am biased by the subject matter. Can't wait to read the new edition including a chapter or two about the building of Falmer and triumphant first season.

"Left foot forward" and "Left foot in the grave" by Gary Nelson. Once again, both are a good read even allow for bias due to seeing "the man" in action at the Goldstone.

..and finally one with absolutely no Albion connection whatsoever.

"My father and other working-class football heroes" by Gary Imlach. Forget the rather worthy sounding title, this is a superb book by TV commentator Imlach about his late father, John Imlach who played for Nottingham Forest and other clubs in the late '50's and '6o's.

...Back to the era of the maximum where most of the spectators could be earning more than a succesful 1st Division player.


Do you have any recomendations of books worth reading or even some that are so bad that they are good if that makes sense!

 

[Starry]

david o learys is good toilet tissue.

john charles - gentle giant is a good footballing read, from when footballers were footballers and not pampered celebrities. he wrote all of it bar one and a half chapters, he died before it got finished. it's a good read though.

 

[seagurn]

Against the enemy

 

[Barrel of Fun]

The Miracle of Castel di Sangro.

Woody & Nord - A football Friendship.

 

[Happy Seagull]

Barca a people's passion by Jimmy Burns.

 

[The Large One]

Against the enemy

Beat me to it.



All Played Out.

 

[Bry Nylon]

"The Glory Game" by Hunter Davies is ONE book you MUST read before you die. An awesome peice of writing

"When the first edition of The Glory Game was published in 1972, it was instantly hailed as the most insightful book about the life of a football club ever published. Hunter Davies was, and still is, the only author ever to be allowed into the inner sanctum of a top-level football team (Tottenham Hotspur) and his pen spared nothing and no one. 'His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing,' wrote Bob Wilson in the New Statesman. 'Brilliant, vicious, unmerciful,' wrote The Sun. Davies spent a whole season with the team, training with them, visiting the players' homes and witnessing the dressing-room confrontations. In the modern era of painstaking media management and tight security, no sportswriter will ever again be granted such unprecedented access. While some features of the game have changed beyond all recognition - notably the all-consuming role that money now plays - inside every club the dramas and tensions revealed by Davies remain, making the book a timeless classic and securing its position as one of the best books about football ever written."

 

[Screaming J]

"The Greatest Footballer you never saw: The Robin Friday Story" by Paolo Hewitt and Paul McGuigan

 

[mansfieldwhippy]

Ryan Giggs autobiography

 

[sams dad]

Football - The Golden Age :1900 - 1985

 

[Lord Bracknell]

 

[Scotty Mac]

i quite enjoyed gordon strachans one

and ronnie moores was a good read

 

[clapham_gull]

"Who ate all the pies"

 

[Gwylan]

Tony Cascarino's autobiography is better than the average football bio.

Arthur Hopcraft's The Football Man is an oldie but goodie.

 

[Moshe Gariani]

"Goalkeepers are different"

"Only a game?"

 

[gjh1971]

Paul McGrath, Back from the Brink

There's also one about Liechtenstein that I cant remember the name of

 

[dougdeep]

Sing when you're Winning.

 

[gjh1971]

Isnt that a Robbie Williams album?

 

[Wozza]

Another vote for All Played Out - Pete Davies.

 

[bristolseagull]

'Soul Crew' is a good way of having a laugh at the taffs.