When Footballers Were Skint

Author : Jon Henderson
Publisher : Biteback Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1785903853
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Footballers Were Skint written by Jon Henderson and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for The Telegraph Sports Book Awards 2019 Long before perma-tanned football agents and TV mega-rights ushered in the age of the multimillionaire player, footballers' wages were capped – even the game's biggest names earned barely more than a plumber or electrician. Footballing legends such as Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews shared a bond of borderline penury with the huge crowds they entertained on Saturday afternoons, on pitches that were a world away from the pristine lawns of the game's modern era. Instead of the gleaming sports cars driven by today's top players, the stars of yesteryear travelled to matches on public transport and returned to homes every bit as modest as those of their supporters. Players and fans would even sometimes be next-door neighbours in a street of working-class terraced houses. Based on the first-hand accounts of players from a fast disappearing generation, When Footballers Were Skint delves into the game's rich heritage and relates the fascinating story of a truly great sporting era.

Author : Jon Henderson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781785904660
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Footballers Were Skint written by Jon Henderson and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before perma-tanned football agents and TV mega-rights ushered in the age of the multimillionaire player, footballers' wages were capped - even the game's biggest names earned barely more than a plumber or electrician. Footballing legends like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews shared a bond of borderline penury with the huge crowds they entertained on Saturday afternoons, often on pitches that were a world away from the pristine lawns of the game's modern era. Instead of the gleaming, expensive sports cars driven by today's top players, the stars of yesteryear travelled to matches on public transport and, after the game, returned to homes every bit as modest as those of their supporters. Players and fans would even sometimes be next-door neighbours in a street of working class terraced houses. Based on the first-hand accounts of players from a fast-disappearing generation, When Footballers Were Skint relates the fascinating story of a truly great sporting era.

Author : Jon Henderson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781785903847
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book When Footballers Were Skint written by Jon Henderson and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before television rights ushered in the age of the multi-millionaire footballer, the wages of professional players were capped so that they earned not much more than the national average wage. This was a time when the men who played for the great football clubs of Britain shared a bond of borderline penury with the fans they entertained. It was almost routine for players to travel to matches on the same public transport as the fans and, after the game, to return to homes that were as modest as those in which their supporters lived. Quite possibly, player and fan were next-door neighbours in a street of working families' terraced houses. Despite the riches that decades later would come into the game, the struggle to end the maximum wage in football seems as worthy as any of the centuries-old skirmishes undertaken by working people against mean-spirited employers. For instance, England regular Tom Finney reflected caustically that of the GBP50,000-plus gate money the FA received from Wembley international matches, the eleven England players would share GBP550, with the remaining GBP49,450 going to the FA. This book takes the first-hand accounts of a disappearing generation of footballers before their stories are lost for ever. Some of those stories are scarcely believable. All of us who call ourselves football fans owe this book's multifarious cast our thanks for giving the national game such a rich and deeply human heritage.

Author : Vince Hilaire
Publisher : Biteback Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1785903764
Total Pages : 299 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Vince written by Vince Hilaire and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-22 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most exciting footballers of his era, Vince Hilaire is a cult sporting figure. His career spanned over 600 games and included spells at Crystal Palace, Portsmouth, Leeds United and Stoke City, playing in every professional division. Vince shared a dressing room with some of football's biggest names of the time, including Kenny Sansom, Mick Channon, Gordon Strachan and Vinnie Jones, and was managed by some of the superstars of British football. This book offers a fascinating insight into the methods of these managers, from Malcolm Allison and Terry Venables, with their free-flowing football reminiscent of the famous 'Busby Babes', to the contrasting rigidity of Howard Wilkinson's Leeds. A trailblazer in the professional game, Vince outlines the difficulties he faced as a young black player making his way in football in the 1970s, and the dread he felt playing at certain grounds.Candidly detailing Vince's journey into and out of professional football, this hugely entertaining autobiography tells the story of the beautiful game as it used to be played.

Author : Paul Ferris
Publisher : Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN 13 : 1473666724
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Boy on the Shed:A remarkable sporting memoir with a foreword by Alan Shearer written by Paul Ferris and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award The Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year The Times Sports Book of the Year Telegraph Football Book of the Year 'Ferris's wonderful memoir represents a twin triumph. He has endured every kind of setback in life but has invariably reinvented himself; and his writing is a pure pleasure.' The Sunday Times 'Enough depth and humanity to make your average football autobiography look like a Ladybird book.' Telegraph 'A masterpiece of the genre' Brian McNally 'Football memoirs rarely produce great literature but Ferris's The Boy on the Shed is a glistening exception.' Guardian 'Fascinating and stylishly told.' David Walsh, The Sunday Times The Boy on the Shed is a story of love and fate. At 16, Paul Ferris becomes Newcastle United's youngest-ever first-teamer. Like many a tricky winger from Northern Ireland, he is hailed as 'the new George Best'. As a player and later a physio and member of the Magpies' managerial team, Paul's career acquaints him not only with Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and Bobby Robson, Ruud Gullit, Paul Gascoigne and Alan Shearer but also with injury, insecurity and disappointment. Yet this autobiography is more than a tale of the vagaries of sporting fortune. It begins during 'The Troubles' in a working-class Catholic family in the Protestant town of Lisburn, near Belfast. After a childhood scarred by his mother's illness and sectarian hatred, Paul meets the love of his life, his future wife Geraldine. Talented and carefree on the pitch, shy and anxious off it, he earns a tilt at stardom. His first spell at Newcastle turns sour, as does his return as a physio, although obtaining a Masters degree shows him what he could achieve away from football. When Paul qualifies as a barrister, a career in Law beckons. Instead, a craving to prove himself in the game draws him back to St James' Park as part of Shearer's management triumvirate - with unfortunate consequences. Written with brutal candour, dark humour and consummate style, The Boy on the Shed is a riveting and moving account of a life less ordinary

Author : Paolo Hewitt
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 178057021X
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw written by Paolo Hewitt and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-05-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robin Friday was an exceptional footballer who should have played for England. He never did. Robin Friday was a brilliant player who could have played in the top flight. He never did. Why? Because Robin Friday was a man who would not bow down to anyone, who refused to take life seriously and who lived every moment as if it were his last. For anyone lucky enough to have seen him play, Robin Friday was up there with the greats. Take it from one who knows: 'There is no doubt in my mind that if someone had taken a chance on him he would have set the top division alight,' says the legendary Stan Bowles. 'He could have gone right to the top, but he just went off the rails a bit.' Loved and admired by everyone who saw him, Friday also had a dark side: troubled, strong-minded, reckless, he would end up destroying himself. Tragically, after years of alcohol and drug abuse, he died at the age of 38 without ever having fulfilled his potential. The Greatest Footballer You Never Saw provides the first full appreciation of a man too long forgotten by the world of football, and, along with a forthcoming film based on Friday's life, with a screenplay by co-author Paolo Hewitt, this book will surely give him the cult status he deserves.

Author : Nige Tassell
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1473546184
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Bottom Corner written by Nige Tassell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Not since The Football Man has a book so captured the passion of the game. The Bottom Corner is a wonderful journey through life in the lower reaches of the football pyramid. A fascinating tale of a very different world of football from that of the overpaid stars of the television age’ Barry Davies In these days of oligarch owners, superstar managers and players on sky-high wages, the tide is turning towards the lower reaches of the pyramid as fans search for football with a soul. Plucky underdogs or perennial underachievers, your local non-league team offers hope, drama or at least a Saturday afternoon ritual that's been going for decades. Nige Tassell spends a season in the non-league world. He meets the raffle-ticket seller who wants her ashes scattered in the centre-circle. The envelope salesman who discovered a future England international. The ex-pros still playing with undiluted passion on Sunday mornings. He spends time at clubs looking for promotion to the Football League, clubs just aiming to get eleven players on a pitch every week, and everything in between. One thing unites them: they all inhabit the heartland of the beautiful game.

Author : Gary Imlach
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1446483738
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book My Father And Other Working Class Football Heroes written by Gary Imlach and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD A poignant and moving account of the author’s search for the man his father was and the life he led as a well-known footballer, blending the personal and the historical into an unforgettable story Stewart Imlach was an ordinary neighbourhood soccer star of his time. A brilliant winger who thrilled the crowd on Saturdays, then worked alongside them in the off-season; who represented Scotland in the 1958 World Cup and never received a cap for his efforts; who was Man of the Match for Nottingham Forest in the 1959 FA Cup Final, and was rewarded with the standard offer - £20 a week, take it or leave it. Gary Imlach grew up a privileged insider at Goodison Park when Stewart moved into coaching. He knew the highlights of his father's career by heart. But when his dad died he realised they were all he knew. He began to realise, too, that he'd lost the passion for football that his father had passed down to him. In this book he faces his growing alienation from the game he was born into, as he revisits key periods in his father's career to build up a picture of his football life - and through him a whole era. ‘The most emotionally charged and moving sports book I've ever read’ Daily Mail

Author : Ronald Reng
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1446499022
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Life Too Short written by Ronald Reng and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR Why does an international footballer with the world at his feet decide to take his own life? On 10 November 2009 the German national goalkeeper, Robert Enke, stepped in front of a passing train. He was thirty-two years old and a devoted husband and father. Enke had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Barcelona and Jose Mourinho's Benfica and was destined to become his country's first choice in goal for years to come. But beneath the veneer of success, Enke battled with crippling depression. Award-winning writer Ronald Reng pieces together the puzzle of his friend's life, shedding valuable light on the crushing pressures endured by professional sportsmen and on life at the top clubs. At its heart, Enke's tragedy is a universal story of a man struggling against his demons. ‘It should be on every British football fan's reading list’ Metro

Author : Ben Smith
Publisher : Biteback Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1849549265
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Journeyman written by Ben Smith and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BEN SMITH: PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALLER. Recognise the name? Of course you don't. That's because most of Smith's years in the game were spent outside the vaunted, big-money environs of the Premier League - and this sporting memoir is all the more entertaining as a result. 1995: an adolescent Ben arrives at the training ground of one of England's biggest clubs to begin his journey and realise his dream of playing top-flight professional football. Aged just sixteen, he shares pre-season sessions at Arsenal with the likes of Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright. Surely this is the start of a stellar career? Instead, the next seventeen years saw the bright young star descend the ranks from Highbury to obscurity. With seasons playing for the likes of Reading, Yeovil, Southend, Hereford, Shrewsbury and Weymouth - and a career including three promotions, one relegation and some very memorable FA Cup games - Ben's story is one of a quintessential journeyman footballer. Candidly describing the negotiations, insecurities, injuries, relocations, personal implications and wet Saturday afternoons playing in front of 500 people, Journeyman offers a unique insight into the unvarnished life of a lower-league player - so far removed from the stories of pampered Premiership stars - as well as documenting the many teammates, opponents, managers and coaches who left an indelible mark on Ben's eclectic career. Refreshingly unsentimental and often hilarious, Smith's story is essential reading for all true fans of the not-always-so-beautiful game.