Mr and Mrs Soccer – Andy Harper

I was lucky enough a few weeks ago to find a copy of the out-of-print Mr and Mrs Soccer by Andy Harper at a local op-shop (or charity shop for the non-Australians). After handing over the spare change in my pocket to buy the book, I beamed at having finally secured the missing book in what I think of as a set of three books that make up the early oeuvre of Australian football literature up until the mid-2000s. Along with Mr and Mrs Soccer, this triumvirate also includes Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters by Johnny Warren, and By the Balls by Les Murray.

So, needless to say, it gave me great pleasure to read Mr and Mrs Soccer. The titular ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ are Johnny Warren and Les Murray (or vice versa), the indefatigable, indomitable, and inimitable broadcasting duo that carried the flame of Australian football from the 1970s until the mid-2000s. In this book, commentator and writer Andy Harper interviews Johnny and Les as they look over their career on television together, each the yin to the other’s yang, and as surrogate football missionaries to a generation finally opening its eyes to the wonders of the world game.

“Johnny: Seven didn’t show much interest in football at all. I remember when Rex was commentating on a game between England and Australia. Off air, during a break in play or at half time, he turned and said, ‘If this game ever takes over from rugby league you can fuck me in Pitt Street.’ He was flabbergasted. Then he proceeded to call the ball as ‘going into touch’, ‘out on the full’, as well as ‘touch judge has his flag up’ and references to ‘the umpire’. The football media landscape was barren in the extreme” (pg. 36)

Andy Harper, the co-author of Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters with Johnny Warren, goes to the productive well of Australian footballing heartbreak to interview Johnny and Les on the state of football in the country from the 1960s to 2004. Johnny and Les reminisce about growing up amongst the Hungarian diaspora in Sydney, as well as their early forays into football broadcasting that steeled them into the weathered, consummate professionals and doyens of SBS later. They also discuss their anger, driving skills, and the pleasures of smoking. Johnny reflects on his cancer diagnosis and, in gracefully accepting his fate borne from his chain-smoking sins over decades, readers (especially Australian readers) can be forgiven for getting misty-eyed in the present day. There is a bit of room at the end of the book for the duo to opine on Australian identity through the prism of football, and the future of the world game generally; but these asides are like sipping on sweet coffee after already devouring the filling meal.

Of particular interest is the change in cadence when Johnny and Les talk about their chief analyst and SBS Head of Sport roles respectively during the coverage of the 2002 World Cup. The power dynamics between the two, with Johnny, offended for his viewers after chief match commentator Martin Tyler was allowed to jump to Channel 9 for the World Cup Final, while Les defended his decision-making in dealing with a combustible Johnny, is fascinating to read about. This account serves up some humility and regret in a remarkable friendship that allows for this kind of reflection without any lingering animosity, reflected by the various ‘on the balls’ (vigorous, spirited debates on football) and ‘Tre collis’ (their bursts of anger and frustration in dealing with the pressures of travel) that they mention.

“Les: Johnny’s contract came up for renewal and there were further discussions. That was probably the most uncomfortable time I have ever had with Johnny; discussing Johnny’s performance and his future, arguing SBS’s position to Johnny’s lawyer, with Johnny sitting next to him. It was a rare occasion when we were on opposite sides, and it was pretty unpleasant.” (pg 146)

Stylistically, Mr and Mrs Soccer is an appropriate representation of Murray and Warren’s friendship and working relationship. Reading the alternating passages between the two, you can picture them both sitting at angles to each other behind that desk on The World Game, as the television screen places them at such a distance apart that you can’t figure out if it’s out of deference or annoyance with each other. Writer Andy Harper must be given credit for marshalling the experience, knowledge, and cachet of the duo to give such a warts-and-all account of their experiences. In doing so, Harper uses Mr and Mrs Soccer as a bridge between the before (Australia’s footballing oblivion) and the after (achieving the seemingly mythical in qualifying for the World Cup) for a new generation of Australian footballing fans that must be humbled to remember that the relative success of Australian football is underpinned by ignominy and adversity, yet was foretold and beckoned with the unrelenting support of this rare breed of men.

Even if some of their hopes and suggestions in Mr and Mrs Soccer come off as naff (reducing the number of players to 10-a-side) and quixotic (Australia to win the World Cup someday) twenty years later, we have to remember that such ideas were borne out of the bloody-minded idealism that all mavericks possess. Their ideas, as challenging and provocative now as they were before, have a great timbre and lustre. The prescience is there, too. Johnny must be spinning in his grave with the “vested interests of [more than] a small number of money-hungry European clubs” in modern times; and Les must be fuming with the introduction of video technology to deliberate on far more than whether a ball crossed a line or not.

*Johnny and Les at USA 1994 in San Francisco. (Courtesy SBS Television)*

Quite rightly, the Warren-Murray partnership, in all its forthright, pioneering, and ornery vicissitudes, is the focus of Mr and Mrs Soccer. The book was published before the Australian footballing renaissance in the mid-2000s. They lived, worked (and Johnny played) through the highs, lows, and intolerable doldrums of the Australian football domestic and international scene. Although Australian football suffered the crushing blows of the 1997 loss to Iran in the World Cup Playoff match and the Uruguay defeat in 2002, Warren and Murray had long before rallied an apathetic nation to finally feel something—even if it was soul-crushing defeat—by unfailingly appearing on our screens and replanting the football flag. It mattered because it hurt, and badly.

It is bittersweet to be able to refer to Johnny and Les in the present tense in parts of this review, for although they passed away in 2004 and 2017 respectively, such has been their legacy on football in Australia that I still think of them as alive and kicking, spreading the football gospel on SBS every Sunday morning on The World Game. While reading Mr and Mrs Soccer, I could hear Les’ sophisticated, Euro-inflected English and Johnny’s forthright erudition in every sentence attributed to them.

“Johnny: …the politics and administration of the game in this country have been a disgrace. There have been some very strong anti-soccer forces that have enjoyed this and used it for their own ends but the things that soccer administrators have been able to control have been mismanaged by organisational incompetence and political skullduggery.” (pg. 155)

Mr and Mrs Soccer is Andy Harper’s second book publication behind Sheilas, Wogs, and Poofters. After his professional football career in the National Soccer League (NSL) ended in 2001, he embarked on a productive career in journalism and commentating. Along the way he has gained many fans (and detractors). Clearly, he has contributed much to the domestic football media and literature scenes, and even published a doctoral thesis titled ‘Australia’s Power Structures and the Legitimisation of Soccer (2003-2015)’ in 2020. In a way, he belongs to the second-generation vanguard of Australian football broadcasting talent that was given wings by Johnny and Les.

So, it is quite fitting that Harper, in Mr and Mrs Soccer, plays the role of convener, editor, and witness to this venerable duo; and in doing so, he imparts some of that fiery wisdom to a generation that now knows what it feels like to feel something about football. Johnny and Les’ journey together needed to be told. Read this book, and live again amidst the hopes of the times when things would get better—all the while knowing, full well, that they did.

“Johnny: When we start talking about winning the World Cup, we’ll know the mission is complete. It’s a big task, but it is doable.” (pg. 156)

STARS: 4.5/5

UNDER 20: A fantastic look back on a dynamic duo that contributed so, so much to the development of football in Australia.

FULL-TIME SCORE: Like a 3-0 win remembered from long ago, the layers of affection and nostalgia added over the years burnish the legend and mythos of that victory.

RELATED READING: Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters by Johnny Warren (2002); By the Balls by Les Murray (2006)

Find Mr and Mrs Soccer on Amazon

Raising a glass of Wrexham, to Wrexham

Here I am, sipping on my crisp Wrexham Lager in Melbourne, Australia. I don’t think it would ever have been sold elsewhere around the world far outside of the UK–let alone in Australia–if not for the phenomenon that is Welcome to Wrexham and the cachet of Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac. Globalisation is a remarkable thing.

I happened to come across a six-pack of Wrexham Lager at my local bottle shop, and simply had to buy it. I’m now content that I don’t have to travel all the way to Wrexham to try it! Admittedly, I’m not the best when it comes to describing beer notes, but I can say that it is crisp, malty, and refreshing. Take that as a seal of approval if you like!

Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game – Ian Herbert

You’ve probably seen or heard that Ryan Reynolds’ and Rob McElhenney’s ownership of Wrexham has propelled the club to trophy glory, commercial success, and into American popular consciousness. Welcome to Wrexham, the fly-on-the-wall documentary series and cultural phenomenon that charts Wrexham’s startling rise from National League to Championship over four entertaining seasons, addresses the cynicism of modern-day club ownership by thumbing its nose at PR-massage jobs like All or Nothing.

And if you haven’t seen or heard about it—perhaps that rock that you’ve been living under needs some lifting. For Welcome to Wrexham is stirring viewing, and deserves your attention.

Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game by Ian Herbert is a well-researched and straight-man foil companion piece to Welcome to Wrexham. There is little of the charming snark and wit of the documentary series in Tinseltown, but through Herbert (a Wrexham fan and respected Daily Mail journalist), we can learn more about the club and the city’s history to fully flesh out the angles of anxiety, faded glory, missed chances, and tragedy that haven’t been given the Disney treatment in Welcome to Wrexham.

“Covid’s arrival might have saved Wrexham from relegation but its refusal to go away took what little hope there was left. The turnstile money disappeared, along with the perimeter-board advertisers and the broadcast revenue from occasional live matches on BT Sport. The water and electricity were switched off, the groundsman was paid a retainer to keep out intruders but the turf was no longer cultivated and weeds took over the ground.” (pg. 21)

Herbert writes affectionately about his beloved Wrexham whilst acknowledging the city’s working-class history that is greatly coloured by tragedy. This is a city very obviously under the cosh and living off the fumes of past footballing and industrial glories. Tinseltown’s stories of drug use, juvenile delinquency, and matchday hooliganism underlie the homely football chats over coffee, slow motion redemption shots, and charming stoicism that Welcome to Wrexham routinely serves up.

Tinseltown covers Wrexham’s 2021-23 seasons (which correspond with Season 1 and 2 of Welcome to Wrexham). Familiarity with the documentary series quickly helps us to recognise the knockabout characters around the city (Wayne Jones and Wayne Clarke), the pragmatic heads in the clubrooms (Shaun Harvey, Kevin Mulholland), and the breakout stars (Lili Jones and Rosie Hughes) that are further described in Tinseltown. Herbert also introduces others who don’t appear in the series (for example, club advisor Les Reed, and the shoe repair expert) yet still contribute to the fabric of community and success at the club and around the city.

History features prominently in Tinseltown. Herbert expertly recounts how the Gresford Colliery coal mine disaster of 1934 inflicted multi-generational and shared civic trauma on the city of Wrexham, and how this trauma has infused with the club’s brief snatches of success and its more recent freefall into the depths of the National League. The trauma is palpable as we read that Wrexham’s ignominious survival from relegation from the National League was guaranteed by 0.08 points—a computational reprieve derived from calculating their points-per-game number after Covid lockdown brought an early end to the 2019-20 season. At the lowest ebb of the club’s 156-year history, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney come in and, well, you probably know the rest of the story (or fairytale).

As an invaluable resource the Wrexham story, Tinseltown shines when providing depth and granular detail to what is only hinted at, or glossed over, in Welcome to Wrexham. Such depth includes:a McElhenney thought bubble is followed up by Humphrey Ker as he scours Transfermarkt and FM for a suitable club for McElhenney to invest in (Wrexham? Macclesfield? Hartlepool?); rumours of a Russell Crowe takeover abound; Les Reed’s incisive spotting of playing talent; the sliding doors moment of Stockport signing Paddy Madden instead of Paul Mullin; and the club being happy to eat fines earned from using the wrong kind of signage for a televised FA Cup game. The nature of these details is darkly humourous considering how the club was run on the thinnest of shoestrings not so long ago—a humour that its owners, as they shoot self-deprecating commercials in the Wrexham dressing room, would readily recognise.

“At a stroke, a decades-old narrative at Wrexham was being rewritten. This was a club which had generally prevailed through managers squeezing value and building quality out of players who cost relatively little, though progress this time (if and when it came) would be inorganic. They were spending for success.” (pg. 133)

Herbert casts his journalistic eye far and wide across Wrexham in weaving Tinseltown’s narrative. He occasionally breaks away to give short, italicised vignettes of various characters around Wrexham. These asides do not always emotionally land, and can feel intrusive and jarring. The methodical pacing of relating Wrexham history and Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s genuineness in conducting due diligence on their ambitious new venture, is blunted by pages of quickfire form and result dispatches from the games in the final run in to the 2021-22 season. These dispatches attempt to set up a thrilling denouement, yet since we already know the ultimate result of it all—having already white-knuckled it through the slick production values in Welcome to Wrexham’s final episodes of Season 2—doesn’t impact as much as Herbert intends.

The quickened pace in the final third of Tinseltown also throws up some avoidable errors, with the most glaring being whirlwind striker for the women’s team and legitimate star of the series, Rosie Hughes, being called ‘Rosie Jones’ across several pages, including a reference to Paul Mullin being “the male Rosie Jones”. These editorial lapses chip away slightly at the credibility that Herbert has worked hard to establish.

One of the most fascinating insights that Tinseltown offers (and is hinted at by the connotation of glittering superficiality of the word itself) come with Herbert’s brief observations of Wrexham becoming a commercial vehicle for advertisers and content creators. Welcome to Wrexham shows replacement goalkeeper Ben Foster coming out of retirement to continue his vlogging of goalmouth scrambles, and using the content for his online channel and podcast. Herbert even writes of how attempts to bring in Hal Robson-Kanu and Gareth Bale to wreak havoc on hapless lower league defences fell through. “Fans didn’t want the club to become a content factory” Herbert writes, “a place where old pros went for a last pay cheque.” As objective viewers of Wrexham’s bankrolled success, we cannot help but feel cynical in an age of contemporary football that gives us more than enough reason to be so. Herbert continues: “…amid the team’s inconsistency, the documentary team began seeing the potential of an episode built around that. It would be called ‘Sack the gaffer’. Again, sensitivities were not spared in the quest for creative output.”

Reading Tinseltown is important because it contextualises and voices our cynicism to Wrexham’s newfound success. What can we make of Reynolds’ and McElhenney’s ownership and social philanthropy in an age when ruthless asset-stripping owners and oligarchs who mobilise the wealth of nation-states to launder reputations, continue to run roughshod over proud club histories? “Why had this story of Rob, Ryan and Wrexham captured the zeitgeist in such an extraordinary way?” Herbert asks. He parses the elements of the Wrexham rags-to-riches story and excels in cutting through the cynicism to give us some answers. These answers help us to cheer Wrexham and Reynolds-McElhenney on, even if only begrudgingly, as the freewheeling counterpoints to the scores of irresponsible owners who have, and continue to, grind proud clubs into dust.

Following Tinseltown’s publication, Welcome to Wrexham has stretched to four seasons, and a fifth (filming Wrexham’s Championship tilt in 2025-26) is forthcoming. Over seasons three and four, we watch as footballing journeymen Steven Fletcher and Jay Rodriguez join Wrexham. These expensive signings are the predictable, banal trappings of bankrolled success; the kind of well-worn names that are somewhat antithetical to the community-focused mandate that Reynolds and McElhenney espouse. Where there’s money to spend, there will be a late-30s, in-from-the-cold big earner to vindicate the realists who know that the price of the relentless push for success in the short-term is long-term unsustainability. When will the fatigue hit? Or even the content fatigue? In Herbert’s Daily Mail article from 4^th March, 2025, he writes:

“…it sounds perverse to hope that the club actually don’t win a third successive promotion and make the unprecedented leap from National League to Championship inside three years this spring. I don’t think I’m the only one feeling a sense of unease about that, though. In the cold light of day, I don’t want it to happen… It’s hard to dispel a sneaking suspicion that the breakneck pursuit of Championship football is, to some extent, driven by [Reynolds’s and McElhenney’s] ‘Welcome to Wrexham’ documentary. While the Championship secures more documentary seasons, it’s hard to see a year’s consolidation in League One providing quite the same streaming gold… Wrexham don’t have a training ground. They still only have a temporary stand in place of the old Kop, so the Racecourse will be three-sided when work on a permanent Kop starts… The football journey may have been incredible, but at ground level, little has changed in the five years since McElhenney and Reynolds bought Wrexham.”

Whether Herbert likes it or not, Wrexham currently sit in a respectable 15^th place in the 2025-26 Championship season. Tinseltown, in covering up to Wrexham’s promotion to League Two, only tells half of the Wrexham story under Reynolds and McElhenney. And considering Herbert’s recent scepticism, perhaps he has only told half of his story. On the strength and depth of his writing in Tinseltown, a follow-up would undoubtedly be warmly welcomed and similarly fascinating to read.

“We want to become part of your story. We don’t want you to be our story.” (pg. 378)

STARS: 4/5

UNDER 20: A gripping exploration of the Welcome to Wrexham phenomenon that provides a counterpoint to the soullessness of modern club ownership.

FULL-TIME SCORE: Home-grown Herbert, the defensive cover, works tirelessly to ensure that the depth of glittering new talent further up the pitch put in a shift to win the game 3-0.

RELATED READING: My Wrexham Story: The Inspirational Autobiography from the Beloved Football Hero by Paul Mullin (2023); From Hollywood to Wrexham by Peter Read (2023)

Find Tinseltown: Hollywood and the Beautiful Game on Amazon

Football – Jean-Philippe Toussaint

“I cannot dissociate football from dreams and childhood,” Jean-Philippe Toussaint writes in Football. And we, as readers, can be thankful for this. Across eighty-five pages of evocative writing, Toussaint treats us to a selection of lingering vignettes across a life of following football. Framing most of his writing across five World Cups (1998-2014), Toussaint is the aging, harried, and thoughtful everyman who shuffles and scuffs along and against the passing of time.

“This is a book that no one will like, not intellectuals, who aren’t interested in football, or football-lovers, who will find it too intellectual. But I had to write it, I didn’t want to break the fine thread that still connects me to the world.” (pg. 7)

Football begins in 1998, with Toussaint at forty years of age. The year, “though still intimately connected to our lives, to our time, to our flesh and to our history…had accidently sunk its teeth into the edge of the previous century, and inadvertently, found its feet dangling in the past.” In experiencing this transition into middle age, Toussaint recounts early footballing memories. He introduces a recurring motif of the lag and mismatch with time, first in a description of players at the 1970 World Cup, colourised on TV for the first time, leaving their “physical envelope behind and now pursued [their] moves in black and white, leaving behind him the colour of his jersey, which followed him in slight delay.” Despite such vivid memories, he feels a growing detachment with football (realised through his inability to name more than one player of the Belgian national team at the 1998 World Cup). This detachment hints at his general melancholy with life.

“Never have I, as I did in Japan in 2002, sensed such a perfect concordance of times, in which the time of football, reassuring and abstract had, for a month, not substituted but slid, merged into the most enormous gangue of real time, and had made me feel the passing of time like a long protective caress, beneficiary, tutelary, apotropaic.” (pg. 27)

One third of Football is dedicated to Toussaint describing his experiences watching the 2002 World Cup in Japan. Japan is clearly a place that he is comfortable describing in equally rich colour and gloomy substance. Through the neon signs of Shibuya, rain dripping from the ribs of transparent umbrellas, and the convenience culture of 7-Elevens and Family Marts on every other corner, Toussaint effortlessly portrays the buttoned-down culture and colourful, waterlogged kitsch of Japan. The striking scene of a torrential downpour in Yokohama following the end of the World Cup final, where overcautious and polite stewards herd fans with fluorescent truncheons into the Yokohama Metro, is particularly memorable for what it represents: the clashing and melding of cultures at a time when the term ‘globalisation’ was still an unfamiliar concept to many. The 2002 World Cup ushered in an exciting new age for football, represented by Senegal defeating France in the opening match; co-hosts South Korea narrowly missing out on overall third place; European teams flattering to deceive; the raucous partisan Japanese crowds reminding the European and American markets of the UTC+9 time zone…

Like Toussaint does, I must also beg my readers to forgive me for wandering off and dawdling here, for I’m getting to my central point. The 2002 World Cup was a formative footballing moment for many of us, that “perfect concordance of times” that in memory becomes melancholic and slightly discordant. And this is the take-away from Football: thatwhere there was once colour will soon fade and become monotone. As Toussaint tells us plainly, “I am pretending to write about football, but I am writing, as always, about the passing of time.”

Throughout less-than-satisfying experiences attending and watching subsequent World Cups, Toussaint wrestles with his disaffection until difficult times in 2014 force him to face another concordance—that of professional crisis and the absence of existential meaning. The passage where Toussaint struggles with the buffer and lag in a paid stream of the Argentina v Netherlands semi-final in the 2014 World Cup illustrates him as a man also discordant with technology, and with technology being a gauge of progress, he becomes further displaced in modern times. Another storm and downpour frames this closing to Football, providing a form of cleansing and reconciliation to finding some contentment in his existential lag.

“A cycle was coming to an end, leaving me empty and lost. I experienced a crisis, a fleeting moment of doubt, uncertainty and dejection, which lead me to inquire into the meaning of my life and my commitment to literature” (pg. 63)

Toussaint’s claim that everything contained within Football will appeal to nobody is somehow appealing and endearing. The terse title may already put off pontificating intellectuals and raging tribalists (who both think they don’t need to be told about football) who may not commonly seek the middle ground with the each other. Toussaint appeals to those who are fed up, overindulged, and out of time with football, and those who recognise that football isa middle ground, sitting in light and shadow, that we merely dip in and out of as one means to live, rather than an end to live.

Yet don’t misunderstand—Football is a work of philosophic literature from Toussaint, an established literary intellectual of the nouveau nouveau roman (‘new new novel’) school that pushes narrative experimentation and fragmentation in prose writing. As such, Football can be analysed for what underlies the words beyond their surface meaning (and there will be times when Toussaint’s flair for expression will prompt you to consult a dictionary). Toussaint’s writing style of parataxis and cumulative build-up befits his melancholic recollection and a harried search for a place in time (a shoutout is due here to Shaun Whiteside for his sublime translation). Yet despite Football’s intellectual bent, a familiarity with literature isn’t needed for us to understand what Toussaint is telling us.

For although the experiential knowledge gained with the privilege of attending one World Cup, let alone three, is beyond the means of most of us, the spiritual journey of falling in and out with the world game as fortune and time dictates, is familiar. It is above literary pretensions. One of the many things that the COVID-19 pandemic taught us is that sport is inextricably linked with culture and society, and acts as an identity-forming crutch for so many who are marginalised and ignored by society at large. The belaying rope snaps hard against our falling out, but we are inevitably pulled back toward the safety of midweek and weekend fixtures in due time. We keenly know the disenfranchisement of being ‘apart from the main’, and existing in that space where the lack of colour means a lack of meaning. Yet when we do return from that emptiness, we are forever trying to chase back the time lost.

“At every hour of the day, whether I am walking on the beach or strolling up the path through the scrubland to the old tower, whether I’m swimming in the sea or reading in the little garden, when I’m sleeping, a tireless process of ripening is still at work.” (pg. 67)

Toussaint offers this ‘passing of time’ in Football, but in 2025 we can recognise not just the passing of time, but the compression of time with jam-packed fixtures and never-ending content instantly vying for our attention, resulting in the acceleration of time making games, moments, and player careers highly perishable and easily forgettable. Would Toussaint consider his struggles with technology quaint in current times, when we continue to pay top dollar for subscriptions and streams that still buffer and lag despite greater bandwidth to deliver gigabytes of content on-demand? Despite the distortion of our time so that we may more readily consume the increasingly inconsequential, we, like Toussaint, fall into that melancholic middle ground where it takes all of our attention and energy to keep up, only to remain perpetually off the pace.

So, along with Toussaint, we drift back to our memories and to that ‘perfect concordance of times’ to give us spiritual relief. A wisp of Toussaint’s concordance lies in the common denominator between Roberto Carlos, Shinji Ono, Carsten Jancker, and Pierluigi Collina. Such subtle renderings of time and place make Football sparkle. We desire our own “perfect concordance of times” again, like the return of a cleansing storm. Football is Toussaint’s connective tissue with the world. In a football context, what could be more relatable?

“Football does not age well, it is a diamond that only shines brightly today.” (pg. 24)

Football as a means to ‘life sketch’ is an acclaimed substratum of writing, the brilliance of which is shown in works such as Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Gary Imlach’s My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes. The rich base of reporting and storytelling constantly broadens and deepens. Toussaint’s Football can be added to this. And when ninety minutes seems such a long time to do anything nowadays, you won’t regret the ninety minutes spent reading Football. So, embrace the lag, throw yourself into shadow, silence, and solitude as Toussaint does, and let the time pass without raging against it.

Note: This Fitzcarraldo Editions print of Football also contains Toussaint’s essay ‘Zidane’s Melancholy’, which is not reviewed in this entry.

STARS: 4.5/5

UNDER 20: A hidden work of football literary brilliance that in warning off the wilfully scornful, warms to discerning and disaffected fans.

FULL-TIME SCORE: When the majority of the crowd have left the stadium to beat the traffic before the closing of an uneventful 0-0 draw, the unknown substitute comes on to provide a dazzling cameo, long remembered by those who stayed behind.

RELATED READING: Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (1992)

Find Football on Amazon

My Story – Mark Bright

As I’ve written before, many football autobiographies can be categorised as by-the-number rehashes of a player’s career, or cash grabs to capitalise on a player’s contemporaneous popularity. There are few that transcend these categories, and those that do tend to be the choicest cuts that leave you savouring for more. Don’t be fooled—Mark Bright’s My Story is not one of these outliers. Although it does have its moments, it does unfortunately embody the quality of the first category class of autobiography, wherein the echo of banter and stories of yesteryear is keenly smothered by the ghostwriter’s hollow embrace.

In My Story, Mark Bright—with Kevin Brennan—takes us through his life growing up in foster homes, his experiences with racism in the 1970s West Midlands, his glut of goals across seven clubs, and his burgeoning media career. Throughout the narrative, the flavour of changing UK footballing and societal landscapes across the 1980s and 1990s can be sampled. Bright’s experiences with family, and what family means to him, colour his experiences and keeps him humble—and we, in turn, can be empathetic and, at times, inspired.

Family estrangement, finding family, starting a family, teammates as brothers, and mentoring young players—each variation on the family theme runs as an undercurrent to his footballing journey. Although this theme is one of the strengths of My Story in facilitating his footballing journey, it may put off the readers who aren’t able to slog through the first third of the book as we follow Bright from foster home to foster home.

And this gets to my main criticism of My Story—the style. The words are so hemmed and hedged by the even and perfunctory tone of writing that it all seems so detached. Voice and personality are blunted. These criticisms mark the careful footfalls of the ghostwriter. Hence my use of the word slog. There is no searing insight that you can recognise as coming from a strong opinion or a voice of change. In conveying his story through the sideman, Mark Bright—the scorer of over 160 professional league goals across three divisions and a bona fide Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday legend—becomes the strike partner rather than the main man. He becomes the stage and lights for others. He becomes the dull blade in his own stories. He even becomes the butt of jokes in an awkwardly comedic and seemingly hastily-penned foreword by Gary Lineker.

In looking for points of difference and telling what has yet to be told, writers tend to narrow what we look for in football autobiographies. We look for the anecdotes and pub stories. And there are seams of anecdotal gold and silver in My Story. The words neon up whenever Ian Wright is mentioned—such is the testament to his ability to light up any room and in My Story to provide spice to some sparse writing. Bright’s brief jaunt at FC Sion meeting Ronaldinho’s older brother is a great yarn. Yet the best of all is the story of centre back-turned-the most in-form striker in the league, Paul ‘Albert Tatlock’ Warhurst, and his insistence on displacing one of Bright or David Hirst as striker on the eve of the 1993 FA Cup Final. Lessons of humility and perspective from Roy McFarland and Kevin Lisbie bookend Bright’s career. Punters may take or leave everything else, considering that the sentiments within are tempered by the economy of emotion.

This review isn’t intended to be a swipe at ghostwriters. In a genre where ghostwritten works are close to the norm, there are many well-written ones that lend a layer of emotional heft, flourish, and substance to someone’s story. We attribute such quality in writing to the strength of what has been told, and perhaps it is cruel that the ghostwriter gets the tiny by-line below the name we are all familiar with. But when the style of writing leaves the subject and their experiences a certain shade of bland, it all just comes across as disconnected and weightless.

I cannot remember exactly when My Story came into my possession, but it may have been part of an early-pandemic bulk buy from Book Depository before Amazon closed it down. The book had sat on my shelf, unassuming and unread, for a few years. Yet from this unclear provenance comes clear recommendation: Unless you are heavily invested in Crystal Palace’s Coppell years or Wednesday’s Francis years, you can leave this unassuming book similarly unread and untouched near the bottom of your pile until a later date.

HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGE

“I don’t think I’m overstating things by saying that the move to Crystal Palace changed the direction of my life forever. I might not have been aware of it at the time, but I can now see that’s exactly what happened. It changed me in so many positive ways. It broadened my education, I mixed with more black people than I had ever done before, London was so much more multicultural than anything I had ever experienced, and I immediately loved it and felt very much at home. There was always a lot going on and, perhaps most important of all, I grew in confidence as a player and a person.”

Bright on his move to London (pg. 140)

STARS: 2/5

UNDER 20: An uneven slog that blandly colours the narrative and gives no justice to the experiences contained within.

FULL-TIME SCORE: The star player doesn’t come off the bench; without him, his teammates on the pitch look forlorn and stilted in possession as the team goes down 0-2.

RELATED READING: A Life in Football by Ian Wright (2016); Crystal Palace FC: The Coppell Campaigns 1984-1992 by Nigel Sands (1992); One in a Million: Trevor Francis by Trevor Francis (2019)

Find My Story on Amazon

Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager

Sir Bobby Robson watches on as England capitulate to West Germany in 1990

The football documentary has of late received a makeover. It was inevitable that the modern-day football documentary would outgrow its gritty, made-for-television docudrama form of the 2000s, to evolve into a more elegant form that melds minimalistic storytelling and raw footage to create a compelling documentary. The masterful F1 documentary Senna has driven this change, and its influence has been seen in recent football documentaries such as Maradona and here with Bobby Robson: More Than A Manager. This documentary outlines Sir Bobby Robson’s various managerial achievements and falls from grace, and crafts a fine portrait of an often cruelly denigrated and misunderstood football man with a worldly bent. Even though Robson passed away from lung cancer in 2009, his legacy positively resounds into the present day. Interviews with figures from Robson’s life showed him to be a caring mentor to his players but a distant father, a successful and daring coach punished for his success, and a man who always looked like he was chasing up ‘unfinished business’.

“When he got on the train at Durham to go to Fulham, and he was looking out the window and he was waving, well, I just broke down to think that, was he going to make the grade? Was he going to be alright?“
Sir Bobby’s father Philip Robson on his son’s start to his playing career

The opening words of Robson, narrated by the man himself, sets the tone of an uncertain adventure already longed played out. “In my early days,” he says, “I always knew what I wanted to do. It was in my blood. I never knew where it would lead me.” Robson continues in a non-linear fashion, beginning with him taking on the Barcelona coaching job nine months after recovering from an operation to remove a malignant melanoma in his head. The mid-to-late 90s is the anchoring point for Robson, and despite the timeline jumping to his salad days as Ipswich manager and to his infamous stint as England manager through the 80s, we always return to his managerial glory days in continental Europe. This period, highlighted by his Barcelona days, acts as the conflict that drives the narrative forward.

Jose Mourinho, Sir Bobby, and Ronaldo taste victory

The magic of Robson inevitably lies with his days as England head coach and as the successor to Johan Cruyff at Barcelona. The touchstone moments within these periods are covered with invaluable raw footage. An irate Robson fronts a press pack disputing Maradona’s first goal in England’s 1986 World Cup quarter final against England (“Maradona handled the ball into the goal, didn’t he? Didn’t he?”). We watch a nervous Robson fold a paper cup from the touchline as he sees England bow out to West Germany in the 1990 World Cup semi-final. We chuckle at his valiant attempts to speak Spanish in press conferences (“Figo, problem, fora. Stoichkov, problem, fora.”), and stand and salute his glorious last stand against the opposing forces within his own club to lead Barca to three trophies in a season before being unceremoniously dumped from his position as manager. No bit of footage is wasted in Robson, and through the lens of hindsight, we learn that Robson, despite his individual brilliance and his legitimate success, was always on a hiding to nothing from internal and external forces in the football world. Like myself, younger football fans will primarily remember Robson from his time as manager of Newcastle United in the early 2000s. Robson’s stint at Newcastle—his last—was a bittersweet one. The toxic situation at the club before Robson’s departure is palpably conveyed through Robson.

“He said it was the hand of God. I said it was the hand of a rascal. And I’m right.”
Sir Bobby on Maradona’s infamous goal in the 1986 World Cup

The interviews carry legitimacy with endorsements of Robson by figures such as Jose Mourinho, Alan Shearer, Ronaldo, Sir Alex Ferguson, Gary Lineker, and Pep Guardiola. Robson clearly had a great influence on Mourinho’s career. Mourinho’s default pose of ‘resting belligerence’ is occasionally broken by misty-eyed recollections (“Without feeling [Robson’s] trust, I couldn’t jump so fast to be working with the best players in the world. Our relationship was phenomenal”). Pep Guardiola recounts how he offered to join Robson at Newcastle United following Robson’s departure from Barcelona (a real sliding-doors moment). Paul Gascoigne, perpetually on the verge of tears, tells of the deep, father-son relationship he had with Robson and how he would receive two calls a week from Robson following Robson’s sacking from Newcastle (“Under Sir Bobby, I knew I was safe. I was safe”; [Robson] could have done anything…to spend most of this time worrying about me was so, so, so unbelievable”). However, Robson’s dedication to his players is reflected with the distance he kept from his family, with his son Mark Robson lamenting that his father spent relatively little time with him. Robson, on a sombre, final note in Robson, seems to acknowledge this.

“They were spot-on when they chose Mr. Robson to be the next one. Spot on.“
Jose Mourinho on Robson’s appointment as Barcelona manager.

Where there is sentimentality, there is also a sense of despondency and feeling of betrayal in the interviews. In regards to Robson’s sacking from Newcastle United, his wife states that “[Robson] was very heartbroken when he was guillotined”, and his son claims that “His world fell apart. We can’t believe it still. Brutal.” Most tellingly was former Newcastle chairman Freddie Shepherd’s assertion that sacking Robson “was like shooting Bambi”. The undercurrent of sadness that flows through Robson is allowed to flow here in its latter parts, especially when Robson, stricken with terminal cancer, shows up to greet the players before the charity match for his foundation, and specifically gives Paul Gascoigne one final word of encouragement.

Devoted disciples to Robson may find the documentary lacking substance in terms of his initial forays into management on the European continent (PSV Eindhoven and Porto) in the 1990s, and a more complete picture of Robson’s life is best served in his autobiographies and biography. Despite this, Robson, as a documentary, almost bursts at its seams with the amount of territory covered. As a lovingly-curated account of Robson’s managerial life, Robson never overstates itself, and as a result is a simple, eminently watchable appraisal of an unforgettable figure in football history. The renaissance of the football documentary is well and truly in swing, and Robson is a prime example of it.

“I remember everything. How long have you got?“
Bobby Robson on his life

STARS: 4.5/5

UNDER 20: A lovingly compiled and elegant recounting of Sir Bobby Robson’s managerial career.

Find Bobby Robson: More That A Manager on IMDB

The Stupid Footballer is Dead – Paul McVeigh

Paul McVeigh’s curiously named The Stupid Footballer Is Dead outlines some important lessons potential footballers must learn in the modern age of footballing. With great focus nowadays on sports science, the days of when a footballer could sink pints down at the pub following a game are well and truly over. McVeigh, however, insists that understanding sports psychology—a fascinating yet underappreciated frontier—is just as important in a footballer’s quest to succeed at the professional level and beyond.

Chapters titled ‘Create a Helpful Self-Image’, ‘Think About Thinking’, ‘Focus on Success’, and ‘Take Preparation and Recovery Seriously’ aren’t exactly new and edifying topics for a footballer already initiated at any professional level. Such advice is straight out of an instructional training session of an honest pro made good in the world beyond football. However, McVeigh very often hits the right tone when doling out his wisdom that is based on his experience mentoring young footballers and aiding in their psychological development. Paul McVeigh is a rare breed—a former pro at the highest level who is also an authority on footballing psychology. He provides case studies of footballers embodying the psychological tenets he describes—examples include James Milner typifying ‘Preparation and Recovery’, and Robert Green typifying ‘Meet Adversity with Strength’.

The anecdotes from McVeigh’s playing days are there too, and serve to flesh out his points. You’ll get snippets of what happened to Rory Allen, McVeigh’s fellow professional at Tottenham; how McVeigh got a gig with Sky Sports; and his on-field tussle with Tim Cahill. He touches on tragedy too, particularly with a car accident following a win in the Championship playoff semi-final.

Here is where The Stupid Footballer is Dead seems to be caught between self-help and autobiography. Autobiographies of players of McVeigh’s ilk are gold dust in a burgeoning market for football literature. Content here, however, is often abridged so as not to override a point. From his Belfast boyhood to sharing a dressing room with the likes of Craig Bellamy, Dean Ashton, and Robert Green (“never fully integrated with the team”), the kernel of an entertaining autobiography is here, yet never fully explored.

Some of McVeigh’s assertions are perhaps a little wide of the mark, also. With the wealth of excellent footballing journalism and long-form nowadays, his criticism of journalists who have never played the game is needlessly dismissive, churlish and straight out of the Robbie Savage book of punditry.

Despite the above shortcomings, The Stupid Footballer is Dead certainly also holds value for the typical footballing fan. McVeigh is a success story in retirement from football, and is a product of the discipline and open-mindedness that he practiced during his playing career. Many of the lessons McVeigh describes can be applied to high-performance tasks or everyday life, and will attract the more reluctant reader of self-help books. He introduces the wonderful mantra to live by, “There is no such thing as failure, only feedback” which should inspire many readers.

HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGE
From McVeigh’s mentor, Gavin Drake:

“Gavin had explained to me that when we ‘focus’ we should be channelling our energy into what we want to happen with an expectation of achieving that aim. The brain works ‘teleologically’, which means that it will lock on to and help you achieve whatever you focus on, and quite naturally, you will gravitate in that direction.” (pg. 52)

STARS: 3/5

FULL TIME SCORE: An inspiring 2-0 win led by the red-faced veteran at the heart of defence, willing his young charges on until the final whistle.

Retired – Alan Gernon

Retired is a thorough write-up of the numerous troubles faced by football players upon leaving professional football. The footballing public is often unsympathetic and critical of highly-paid stars who have fallen on hard times, however Retired provides some much-needed perspective on the personal and health issues ex-footballers are consumed by when the game leaves the players behind.

Retirement for ex-footballers is indeed a scary premise. Over nine chapters, author Alan Gernon remains sympathetic of ex-footballers in navigating the retirement ‘minefield’. His description of issues such as divorce, bankruptcy, drug use, gambling, physical and mental health, and crime are well-researched and underpinned with relevant and often shocking statistics. For example, the author states that: 80% of retired players will suffer from osteoarthritis; 75% will get divorced within three years of retirement; and 35% will suffer from some form of depression. In a book replete with such statistics, Niall Quinn’s insistence that Retired is “the most important football book in a long time” is certainly given credence. The anecdotes from and of ex-players also give depth to the sobering and often dry reading. As such, the stories of Lee Hendrie, Peter Storey, and Michael Branch among others are drawn upon.

Jeff Astle’s sad passing from CTE frames Retired’s damning assessment of the football industry’s handling of the mental health of ex-professionals; an assessment that also touches upon male bravado in the dressing room as a mask for depression and anxiety (remember what John Gregory said to Stan Collymore all those years ago?).

The tone of Retired is hard-edged and softens in its treatise of players voluntarily giving the game away completely, or staying in the game as a pundit or coach. Who’d ever thought David Bentley would be now running restaurants in Spain, or Lee Bowyer would be clearing the brush away from his own fishing lake in France? You may not be familiar with names such as Richard Leadbeater or Shane Supple, but their stories are fascinating. Such anecdotes serve to show that players fall out of love with the game, and the decision to quit can be a slow-burning one or even a sudden one—as in the case of Espen Baardsen’s decision to give it away just as he was about to tuck into a Tesco sandwich. This softer side of Retired acts as a counterpoint to the first half of the book.

Of particular highlight is the interview with BBC pundit and seeming Renaissance Man, Pat Nevin. He comes across as erudite and well-informed, and throws in his two cents about the desperate hordes of ex-professionals thinking that punditry is a given upon retirement.

Retired hits hard like an expose aimed more so toward footballing authorities, rather than the failures of footballers failing to recognise the pitfalls of a cutthroat profession. A sense of entitlement pervades but is rarely touched upon, and player failings in avoiding issues such as bankruptcy, divorce, and gambling and not covered in Retired. Although these failings are not the only causes for an ex-player’s downward spiral in retirement, the blinkered attitudes of professional players at the highest level prior to retirement was not adequately covered in Retired. A pro career may finish in an instant, or it can be a dramatic fall from grace. The author, in this respect, was prescient with his description of a World Cup 2018 England squad featuring Joe Hart.

Nevertheless, Retired is indeed an important book for football fans that will add broad shades of understanding to complex issues facing ex-professionals, and will add much-needed perspective to often one-sided pub arguments.

HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGES
On the attrition rate of young professionals:

“A young player, groomed by their club since childhood, has solely focused on a career in the game. They generally have no education to fall back on, so when they’re one of the 98 per cent to be jettisoned between the ages of 16 and 21 panic sets in—remember you are only two per cent on 16-year-olds on a club’s books that are still playing professionally by the age of 21. For the 22 players on the pitch in the next match you watch, consider that there are another 1,100 who were churned out and discarded by professional football before getting the proverbial key of the door.” (pg. 103)

In an interview with Gordon Watson:

“Watson had been gambling during his career but the free time afforded by retirement exacerbated his problems. ‘I think that it took hold all the way through my career. Time, place and money are the triangle of disaster. But I didn’t have the time when I was a player. I was training or travelling or preparing for a match. But as soon as the lines of the triangle align, then it’s just like a runaway train.” (pg. 237)

STARS: 3.5/5

FULL TIME SCORE: An end-of-season 2-2 away draw upon which the long-serving veteran stands tearfully contemplates his retirement before the travelling support.

The Bottom Corner – Nige Tassell

In The Bottom Corner, author Nige Tassell casts light on the non-league echelons of English football and explores the cast of characters involved in keeping afloat the clubs that live and die by individual results. Through this romanticised pallor, the reader is brought into a world underrepresented in slick, mainstream football media—a world that exists below that much vaunted line of professional demarcation, yet seems to actively push against it to remain apart.

Two narratives are presented in depth. Bishop Sutton, cellar dweller of the Toolstation Western League Division One, can barely muster a team to avoid the ignominy of a winless season. Tranmere Rovers (“a star-crossed football club that perpetually finds new and painful ways to kick its fans in the gut”), oh-so-close to a Premier League berth some 25 years ago, attempts to return to the professional league on the first try. No slickly crafted, feel-good tropes of miraculous comebacks and last-minute winners abound here. Instead, these two narratives serve to show just how tumultuous the going can be in non-league football, and how nothing is guaranteed amidst the turgid play of part-timers slugging away at each other for a shot at individual glory at the professional level.

In between these narratives and over ten fascinating chapters, characters emerge that provide shape and substance to non-league football. A Philippines international captain in the twilight of his career. A striker trying his best to get (back) into the national Gibraltar setup. A reluctant goal machine (“I’ve put eighty balls in the net”) who is also restricted in movement due to a driving ban. A young Sierra Leonean and Chelsea U-19 castoff looking for his place in football. Such vignettes serve to highlight the “tension between collective ambition, between team and self, is omnipresent, no matter what level”.

Only in the muddy scrabble of non-league could there be a motley bunch. Coaching staff and fans are well represented, of course, in the pages of The Bottom Corner. So are well-meaning footballing anoraks steeped in the glory of ‘groundhopping’ (“blokes who are forty-five onwards. We’re all trainspotters or ex-trainspotters), as well as the entrenched volunteers such as those at Salford FC refusing to move their food stalls despite Gary Neville’s insistence. Rarely is there disaffection amongst these types, and when there is, something glorious comes out of it—the formation of FC United of Manchester conceived at a series of curry houses comes to mind here.

Where there is glory, however, there is also tragedy. The deaths of two Worthing United players at Shoreham while commuting to a game bookends The Bottom Corner. There is also tragedy that touches on the inherent difficulties faced by non-league clubs and officials. An honest toiler misses training because he has been held in detention; a septuagenarian referee continues officiating out of love, but also because of a lack of young referees; and a successful team completely gutted when its gaffer takes his players and staff to a more competitive level. When BBC presenter Mark Chapman was quoted about non-league football, “I love it. It feels earthy, it feels real. It’s the noise, it’s the Bovril, it’s the smell of a pie that’s been there a week and a half”, he possibly didn’t have in mind the wound-up clubs, the sodden and empty pitches from cancelled games, and the clear lack of investment from England’s ruling football body. This is non-league reality.

Nige Tassell does a remarkable job bringing these stories together. He does, however, seem to spread himself a little thin at times. A such, many stories are naturally open-ended and lack a take-away lesson. A bit of context with the structure of non-league football would not go astray, particularly for someone not familiar with the vagaries of it. The Bottom Corner is a breezy read, and clearly—as has been previously discussed—contains plenty of special moments that will resound with the reader beyond the last page. There are also plenty of those ‘Oh, so that’s where that player ended up!’ moments.

HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGE:
Upon coaching staff of phoenix club Hereford FC returning to the abandoned Edgar Road home ground of the wound-up Hereford United:

“In the home dressing room, the detritus of the final training session lay everywhere—muddy shirts, screwed-up socks and mildewing towels. Upstairs in the bar, the beer had been festering in the pipes for six months, while a selection of mince pies lay untouched on a tray. The Christmas decorations were still up. Everything seemed to be waiting for the arrival of a crack forensics team to dust for prints.” (pg. 272)

STARS: 4/5

FULL TIME SCORE: An entertaining, end-to-end slog in a 3-2 FA Vase tie. Featuring a dog on the pitch.

Lost In France – Spencer Vignes

Lost In France chronicles the life of enigmatic Welsh goalkeeper Leigh Richmond Roose before it was cruelly cut short on a WWI battlefield.

On the football field, Roose was a maverick goalkeeper who set the gold standard for goalkeeping in the early 20th century English leagues. He played with passion, abandon, and inspired a generation of goalkeepers to be as daring as him. Off the field he was a playboy that moved in and out of London social circles, living off the suspect living payments his clubs provided him with in return for his goalkeeping expertise. As such, controversy followed him around in his prime and during the twilight of his career. He burned bridges with some clubs, while others glorified him. He was erudite, athletic, confident–a genuine football philosopher who would regularly wax lyrical on the fine art of goalkeeping in newspapers. This daring-do led him to the WWI battlefield, and after serving England with great pride he, like many of his generation, was cut down in a foreign field.

Lost In France author Vignes delicately and authoritatively picks apart Roose’s life from the scant anecdotal evidence, and his investigation on where Roose’s finally resting place lies is a particular highlight. Overall, Lost In France is not just an insight on the life of the maverick goalkeeper, but an insight into the English football league in its formative years. As such, the writing takes on a historical bent and lacks a certain poetic feel. Nevertheless, Lost In France is an informative and short read that outlays the fascinating English foundations of the game we so love through the prism of one of its forgotten heroes.

It is interesting to note that Vignes has provided a chapter at the end in which Roose’s goalkeeping ‘philosophy’ is laid out in detail, taken from articles Roose had written for newspapers/magazines in his prime. Though Roose’s thoughts are often unintelligible and confusing, there is an undoubted genius behind his words. One can only speculate as to what he could have achieved in his life after football, had he come through WWI.

STARS: 4/5

FULL TIME SCORE: An inspired and heroic display by the goalkeeper leads to a 3-1 win for the away side.