Football Books - Biographies, Autobiographies etc

[reading_fan]

*bump*

Am just starting to read "Up Pohnpei", about two guys who go out to the remote Pacific island of Pohnpei - the worst international football team - and try to first play international football and then end up managing the country. They were on Soccer AM at the back end of last season.

[larry1971]

one of the best I've ead and I would highly reccomend is Jimmy Greaves's bioggrahy in which he gives a very honest account of his battle against alcholism.

[just some bloke]

Today I picked up Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Promises to be an engrossing read for football fans. Chapters include 'Why England Loses and Others Win', 'Are Soccer Fans Polygamists? A Critique of the Nick Hornby Model of Fandom', and 'Tom Thumb: The Best Little Soccer Country on Earth'

[RFCMod]

The Mark Ward book is good
It really shows how a player can let his life spiral out of control

[Royal Biscuitman]

Harry Redknapps - very good, although slightly raging at him signing a player under our noses by bribing the Reading scout by offering him a job at his club.

Razor Ruddock - good

The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw - A must read for any Reading fan.

Kevin Phillips - Very good, a bargain from the £1 shop. He's clearly not much of a visionary when he talks about Sunderland's 2nd tier points record being unbeatable

Tony Adams - Can't remember if I finished it.

Stuart Pearce - Got bored, didn't read it.

Ian Wright - Didn't bother, gave it to a charity shop.

[Geekins]

Read Peter Schmeichel's one - very good and interesting. Spoke about how he got some friends the hang off him while he would hang on the goal post to make his taller growing up, as well as the incident regarding Ian Wright.

[Croydon Royal]

Have recently read and would wholeheartedly recommend two books from Ronald Reng. One has been getting a lot of praise recently - A Life Too Short, the tragedy of Robert Enke, who tragically committed suicide a couple of years ago. At the time he was Germany's number one goalkeeper, had played for the likes of Barcelona and Benfica, but suffered from depression. This is a story that puts football into perspective, and shows that no matter how successful you can be perceived to be, depression can strike anyone and be a horrible, horrible thing. Reng is a sports journalist but was very good friends with Enke for years beforehand and they'd always planned to write his autobiography together. The book has the blessing of Enke's family and they're heavily involved in telling the story, making for a very intimate and I found deeply affecting book.

The second from Reng is a little less well-known, but is an incredible story. It follows another German goalkeeper, Lars Leese, who somehow went from playing for a Sunday league club in a small town in Germany to playing for Barnsley in that season they had in the Premiership in the late 90's, and back again, all within a couple of years. Called Keeper of Dreams, it's a really great look into an English dressing room (there's some brilliant stories about the Barnsley players lauding up their new found Premiership status, and he's very open about all the pranks, parties and shagging that went on during that one season), and then of course there's the sheer fact that this guy playing for Germany's equivalent of Maidenhead United went from that to helping Barnsley win 1-0 at Anfield in a matter of weeks.

I've read a lot of football books in the last few years, but none as good as these two.

[Ark Royal]

Have recently read and would wholeheartedly recommend two books from Ronald Reng. One has been getting a lot of praise recently - A Life Too Short, the tragedy of Robert Enke, who tragically committed suicide a couple of years ago. At the time he was Germany's number one goalkeeper, had played for the likes of Barcelona and Benfica, but suffered from depression. This is a story that puts football into perspective, and shows that no matter how successful you can be perceived to be, depression can strike anyone and be a horrible, horrible thing. Reng is a sports journalist but was very good friends with Enke for years beforehand and they'd always planned to write his autobiography together. The book has the blessing of Enke's family and they're heavily involved in telling the story, making for a very intimate and I found deeply affecting book.

The second from Reng is a little less well-known, but is an incredible story. It follows another German goalkeeper, Lars Leese, who somehow went from playing for a Sunday league club in a small town in Germany to playing for Barnsley in that season they had in the Premiership in the late 90's, and back again, all within a couple of years. Called Keeper of Dreams, it's a really great look into an English dressing room (there's some brilliant stories about the Barnsley players lauding up their new found Premiership status, and he's very open about all the pranks, parties and shagging that went on during that one season), and then of course there's the sheer fact that this guy playing for Germany's equivalent of Maidenhead United went from that to helping Barnsley win 1-0 at Anfield in a matter of weeks.

I've read a lot of football books in the last few years, but none as good as these two.

Good shout for A Life Too Short. Desperately sad account of how an illness can strike anyone, regardless of status. I found it very difficult to read at times. An American friend - ignorant of all things football-related - thought it the best sports book she had ever read.

[ayjaydee]

Thirded for "a life too short". Will now get the other Ronald Reng book.

A shout also for "The Smell of Football" by Mick (Basil) Rathbone a journeyman footballer who ended up as chief physio/head of sport science at Everton.

[Maguire]

Today I picked up Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Promises to be an engrossing read for football fans. Chapters include 'Why England Loses and Others Win', 'Are Soccer Fans Polygamists? A Critique of the Nick Hornby Model of Fandom', and 'Tom Thumb: The Best Little Soccer Country on Earth'

That's sat on my shelf waiting to look interesting.

[Brum Royal]

*bump* in relation to the other football books thread. Can one of the mods merge the two please?

[RG30]

BUMP

Just purchased Living on a Volcano by Michael Calvin which has had excellent reviews and the author's last book The Nowhere Men was a very good read

[stealthpapes]

I liked the Nowhere Men

I really liked A Life Too Short

There's a book by another crazy German goalkeeper, who ended up playing everywhere. The section on his time at Wimbledon is pretty lolz.

[Ouroboros]

Lutz Pfannenstiel?

There was a good podcast interview available via the Guardian over the summer (not their content originally IIRC).

[Whore Jackie]

The Far Corner - Harry Pearson
Provided You Don't Kiss Me - Duncan Hamilton

Yep, read both of these on our Italian holibobs and thoroughly enjoyed them.

[stealthpapes]

Lutz Pfannenstiel?

There was a good podcast interview available via the Guardian over the summer (not their content originally IIRC).

yes, and thanks

[Ouroboros]

I found him quite an inspiring guy actually. Might give the book a look.

[stealthpapes]

gr8 title

ALMOST half of the goals scored in football are virtually random, reckons Martin Lames of the Technical University of Munich. And football’s best loved narratives—the come-from-behind win, the giant-killing—are those that upset expectations. But Raphael Honigstein’s new book “Das Reboot” focuses on the bits of the game that are not random, and how a well prepared team faces anything but a coin-flip.

After a long period as a footballing superpower, the German side became complacent. The nadir was the European Championships in 2000, when it failed to win a game, even losing to England in a match Mr Honigstein describes as “an all-round embarrassment of footballing poverty”. 14 years later, Germany would humiliate Brazil, the World Cup hosts, 7-1 before defeating Argentina to take home the trophy.

Mr Honigstein’s tale is of unsung innovators as well as national heroes. Dietrich Weise and Ulf Schott, two former players turned officials at the national football association, became convinced that Germany needed to expand its youth programmes. After the Euro 2000 debacle, Germany’s top professional clubs were ordered to set up academies. They were initially resistant to the financial burden, but after ten years, more than half of the players in the top division were academy graduates, saving clubs millions on transfer fees.Coaching also evolved, with the appointment of a former international striker, Jürgen Klinsmann, to the national team in 2004. He irritated many by commuting from California, but he brought a new focus on the mind: Mr Honigstein describes quasi-“management seminars”, with team-building and language classes alongside football. But he also got his limited talent playing a fast, attacking football that was a hit when Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup, which one player described as “Germany’s Summer of Love”. The third-place finishers were thronged at the Brandenburg Gate.

By 2014, Mr Klinsmann had handed over to his former assistant, Joachim Löw, but the team was stocked with players who had had Klinsmann-style training since childhood. One such exercise was the Footbonaut, which fires balls at different speeds and trajectories at players, who must control and pass the ball into a highlighted square until it becomes second nature. Mario Götze (pictured) used the machine for years at his club. In the 2014 World Cup final, he controlled a cross with his chest and volleyed the ball into the net, winning the championship with an exact replica of the training the machine provided. It was “one fluid, instant motion”, a successfully fulfilled plan to defeat randomness.

[Sutekh]

Not so much a book, though he is writing his second book on his time in the game, but a great interview with John Sitton in (what looks like) the back of his cab. It’s a very long interview split into 4 segments. Quite entertaining and revealing in places

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADl0OVXKT9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO7tASkq71k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mdIzhXruJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Hx1ICz40M

[Simmops]

Not so much a book, though he is writing his second book on his time in the game, but a great interview with John Sitton in (what looks like) the back of his cab. It’s a very long interview split into 4 segments. Quite entertaining and revealing in places

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADl0OVXKT9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO7tASkq71k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mdIzhXruJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Hx1ICz40M

My wife's uncle was in the famous video of him ripping his team out at halftime, as he played under him

Said he was one of the biggest pcunts in football