Book reviews

My autobiography
by Roy Keane and Roddy Doyle
W&N, £20
Reviewed by Dave Hannigan
From WSC 335 January 2015

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Near the very end of this book, Roy Keane fondly remembers a night at Nottingham Forest when Brian Clough gifted him a £50 note for accompanying him to a charity event. For a 19-year-old neophyte in 1990, that was a substantial sum and the memory stuck with him. Yet, earlier in the narrative, he talks about telling his family they would all have to cut back after he departed Manchester United, by which time his personal fortune was, according to Sunday newspaper rich lists, well north of £20 million.

That sort of inconsistency is rife in these pages, as rife it would seem as it is in Keane’s personality. He hates publicity and craves anonymity yet for the past decade of his life, he has spoken out so often about so many topics that he’s the footballing equivalent of singer/shock merchant Sinead O’Connor. He’s livid at Alex Ferguson for criticising players and being disloyal but, as he trawls through his own managerial stints at Sunderland and Ipswich, he sticks the boot into those who he believes let him down.

If those sort of double-standards are infuriating, this is still a very entertaining account of the subject’s life since the publication of his first autobiography in 2002. Keane is forthright about most (crucially not all) subjects and, as fans of his fast-paced fiction will already know, ghostwriter Roddy Doyle has a wonderful light, comic touch. His handling ensures that this fairly crackles along while offering glimpses of life behind the scenes at Old Trafford, the Stadium of Light and Portman Road.

For all that though there’s something terribly dissatisfying here. Firstly, all the best gags lose their impact because you’ve already read them somewhere else. Secondly, several times you think Keane is finally going to open up about the demons that drive and torment him. Yet he doesn’t. Drink is discussed more than once but by the end of the book you are no nearer understanding the exact nature of his troubled relationship with alcohol.

Strangely for a memoir, he also swerves away from discussing his family. That may be his prerogative but when he makes references to the adverse impact of controversies on his wife and kids, you expect a little more substance about that side of his life. Surely, the very purpose of a serious autobiography is to show the man behind the lazy tabloid caricature.

Even if it is getting tiresome, Keane is still to be commended for having the guts to rail about Ferguson, the game’s most sacred sacred cow. Yet Irish readers in particular will be disappointed he hasn’t a single thing, positive or negative, to say about John Delaney, chief executive of the FAI, and beyond Keane himself, the most controversial figure in the sport in Ireland. Did the current Ireland assistant-manager pull his punches? Or is he learning to be smart when it comes to staying gainfully employed? Like so much else in this book, there remain more questions than answers.

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Raith Rovers’ improbable journey from the bottom to the top of Scottish football
by Steven Lawther
Pitch Publishing, £14.99
Reviewed by Gavin Saxton
From WSC 334 December 2014

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In November 1994, Raith Rovers beat Celtic in the League Cup final to win the first and only major trophy of the club’s history. This book commemorates the 20th anniversary and charts the club’s progress to Hampden from their low-point as a third-tier part-time team in the mid-1980s, via interviews with many of the players and backroom staff.

It’s a feelgood story, but while there might have been a danger of veering into cliche (there is much talk of “team spirit”) you are instead carried along by the enthusiasm of both the author and his interviewees. Because this was not just a special day for the fans, for so many of the players too it was their professional highlight. Dave Narey and manager Jimmy Nicholl had more illustrious playing days behind them (notably with Dundee United and Manchester United respectively) and youngsters such as Colin Cameron and Steve Crawford had good international careers to come. The rest of the squad, however, was a mishmash of local lads, rejects and journeymen, who came together to give the club the finest period in their history: they won the cup as a Division One side, but were also to go on and take the league title. Their UEFA Cup campaign the following season (although not covered here) gave them a tie against Bayern Munich, during which they led 1-0 in the Olympic Stadium at half time before losing 4-1 on aggregate. Accordingly almost all of the squad have been happy to talk, and author Steven Lawther succeeds by, for the most part, allowing them to tell the story, intervening only to provide linking narrative and fill in the necessary detail.

The stories include the bad days as well as the great ones, some entertaining insights into the minds of middle-ranking footballers – such as Gordon Dalziel’s efforts to avoid having to work too hard in a training session – and of course all the on-field heroics. Among the most improbable is the tale of Brian Potter, the 17-year-old goalkeeper who came on as sub after Scott Thomson’s red card and made the vital save to win the penalty shootout in the semi-final against Airdrie.

In the final Thomson himself became the hero, again in a penalty shootout after a late equaliser gave Rovers a well-earned 2-2 draw. Celtic captain Paul McStay was the man whose penalty Thomson saved (the book’s title comes from Jock Brown’s TV commentary at the time: “Unthinkable surely for the skipper to miss”), and McStay deserves huge credit for putting the bad memories aside and also allowing himself to be interviewed.

For those like myself who were following Raith at the time the book brings back wonderful memories. But for others too, it’s a great story and an evocation of a time when lower-league clubs could have such days in the sun. As the game in both England and Scotland polarises all the more between haves and have-nots, one suspects it’s a tale that, just two decades on, would now be impossible. Unthinkable, even.

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The inside story of Pep Guardiola’s first season at Bayern Munich
by Marti Perarnau
Arena Sport, £14.99
Reviewed by Dermot Corrigan
From WSC 334 December 2014

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During the 2013-14 season Bayern Munich had 279 training sessions over 326 days, while also playing 56 official matches and 14 friendlies. The team won four of six trophies entered, but the season was not seen as a success. All this was witnessed by author Marti Perarnau while writing this book. It begins as a typical enough season diary. Perarnau is a former Olympic high-jumper and now friend of Guardiola’s, allowed daily access to Bayern’s private training sessions. The inside story includes lots of previously unpublicised detail on the tactical exercises, choreographed group moves and regular video sessions Pep uses to introduce his “game philosophy” to his new team.

The concepts involved are meticulously described in a way sure to interest tactical buffs, and probably opposition coaches, but the language sometimes goes too far. Phrases like “belief system”, “innovation” and “mission” appear regularly. His assistant calls Guardiola a “football revolutionary” who “deconstructs ideas”. The biggest tactical innovation of the season is using full-backs as “false midfielders”.

But Perarnau has not just written a book about cutting-edge football tactics or training methods. Pep Confidential works best as a character study of a worryingly obsessive individual, who appears to be driven mostly by a fear of failure. Just a month into the season Guardiola is “depressed, silent, brooding” at home, frustrated at an inability to get the players to understand his ideas. He regularly changes his mind on tactics and line-ups while preparing for big games, and gets so nervous on matchday that he cannot eat anything even before evening kick-offs. Guardiola leaves the post-match dinner late one night with his sleeping young daughter in his arms, while asking Perarnau to remind him in the morning to talk to Thomas Müller about his positioning. “I have so many doubts, I worry about everything and am secure about nothing,” he tells the author in one of many such awkward moments.

Perarnau writes that Guardiola’s “deep fear of coming under attack… was probably born during his playing career. He was physically fragile and lacked athleticism – rather on the puny side.” His friend claims such “anxiety” is overcome through “audacity”, arguing that “Pep has developed enormous courage precisely because of this fear”. But it is the fear which dominates this book.

Even Guardiola’s players appear to be concerned about their coach. Philipp Lahm says: “He’s such a perfectionist… he can never allow himself to sit back and say ‘this is brilliant’.” Thiago Alcantara says similarly: “Pep will never enjoy football because he is always looking for what has gone wrong in order to correct it.” The book ends with Perarnau saying “Guardiola’s second year [at Bayern] promises to be even more intense”. But it never seems to question whether so much intensity is positive for either Pep or his teams.

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My autobiography
by Rio Ferdinand
Blink Publishing, £20
Reviewed by Jonathan O’Brien
From WSC 334 December 2014

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At the time of writing, media speculation was rife that Rio Ferdinand’s brief spell at Loftus Road would soon be brought to an end, with QPR reportedly left cold by the 35-year-old’s efforts since he joined them from Manchester United last July. Should the press scuttlebutt be true, it will be a somewhat shabby end to what’s been an excellent career. For all his intermittent inanity off the pitch, Ferdinand remains, alongside Tony Adams, the best centre-half produced by English football since Bobby Moore.

It’s hard to tell whether #2Sides would have been a superior book had Ferdinand employed a different ghostwriter (the one he did hire, David Winner, has taken an unconventional approach to the form, as we shall see). The title, a nod to his fondness for spending hours on Twitter, immediately makes the heart sink – and for the most part, the contents are similarly disappointing. In fact, it’s less a memoir and more a succession of disparate polemics on Ferdinand’s most cherished (or, in the case of John Terry, least cherished) topics, presented with few concessions to the concept of basic chronology.

Ferdinand has been a sufficiently voluble presence in the media over the years for you to more or less know in advance what his take on each subject will be. Fabio Capello and Roy Hodgson are duly slammed. So is David Moyes for his miserable ten months as Manchester United manager, though in this case Ferdinand does leaven the harsh criticism with unstinting praise for Moyes as a person (as well as revealing that the alleged “Do it like Phil Jagielka would” exchange on the training ground never actually happened). The details of his now-terminal rift with Ashley Cole, ignited when Cole gave evidence in favour of Terry, are rendered in almost sorrowful terms.

But #2Sides suffers woefully from its utter absence of structure. No sooner has Ferdinand finished talking about the Terry racist abuse trial or the 2008 Champions League final or a title race, than we’re off into a digression about the restaurant he co-owns, or his favourite music (grime and corporate rock), or something equally thrilling. There’s even a chapter devoted solely to that Twitter account, entitled “5.7 Million And Counting”. It’s not up to much.

If you’re wondering why #2Sides has little discernible structure or cohesion, it’s worth mentioning that Winner has form for this approach. In Brilliant Orange, his award-winning 2001 study of Dutch football, the author gave the chapters random “squad numbers” for whimsical reasons. It worked very well on that occasion, but a number of his more recent books – Those Feet, Around The World In 90 Minutes – have been misfires, and so is this. Winner ghostwrote #2Sides immediately after finishing Dennis Bergkamp’s memoir Stillness And Speed, so there may or may not have been an element of racing to beat the clock.

By far the most substantial chapter comes early on, where Ferdinand explains his approach to the art of defending, going into fascinating detail about how he could “smell out” one kind of attacking danger and his long-time partner Nemanja Vidic could scent another. A penny for Tony Fernandes and Harry Redknapp’s thoughts if they read it.

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The north-east, football, boom & bust
by Michael Walker
DeCoubertin Books, £16.99
Reviewed by Paul Brown
From WSC 334 December 2014

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In 1960 the BBC journalist Arthur Appleton wrote a still-admired portrait of north-east football called Hotbed of Soccer. The title was apt, the book being published between Jackie Milburn’s Newcastle winning the FA Cup three times in the 1950s, and Bobby and Jack Charlton’s England winning the World Cup in 1966. The north-east had long been regarded as football’s great nursery, producing a succession of fine players and 
influential managers.

Yet Appleton recognised that the area’s influence on British football was waning. Its clubs were in decline and its players were leaving the region. As cases in point, Newcastle have not won a domestic trophy since the 1950s, and neither Charlton brother played for a north-east team. Even from his 1960 vantage point, Appleton was inclined to look back. “When the present has been temporarily exhausted, there is the rich past to be peeped into,” he wrote.

Fifty-four years later, Michael Walker explores that rich past, and the unavoidably depressed present, in Up There, an excellent and long-overdue social history of north-east football. From the game’s earliest years, Walker shows how the industrial north-east established itself as a football powerhouse. Cash-rich Sunderland won the Football League four times by 1902 and innovative Newcastle won the League three times, and the FA Cup, by 1910. There was a seemingly infinite stream of great players, from Colin Veitch, Raich Carter and Wilf Mannion to Stan Mortensen, George Camsell and Stan Anderson (who, uniquely, captained Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough).

Some became great managers. Brian Clough and Don Revie both grew up in terraced houses in Middlesbrough. Bob Paisley and Bobby Robson, like many of the region’s most prominent football characters, came from mining communities. As Walker discovers via a series of insightful interviews, mining and other industries were central to the success of north-east football, providing structure and stability for community teams and local players. When north-east industry took hits, so did north-east football, particularly after the wars, and then, fatally, during the brutal 1980s.

The 1990 World Cup represented something of a last hurrah. England’s starting XI included four north-east players in captain Bryan Robson, Paul Gascoigne, Peter Beardsley and Chris Waddle, plus manager Bobby Robson. By the 2014 World Cup, England’s sole north-east-born starter was Jordan Henderson. Henderson is one of the few remaining north-east players in the Premier League, with Steve Bruce the only north-east manager.

The decline of north-east football at all levels is well illustrated when Walker presents Durham FA secretary John Topping with a 1983-84 yearbook, and asks what has happened to its list of 16 youth leagues. “Gone. Gone. Gone…” replies Topping. Only two of the 16, he explains, are still around.

Walker does manage to find some causes for optimism. The pioneering Northern League is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, Gateshead are pushing for a return to the Football League and Middlesbrough are challenging for promotion to the Premier League. At junior level, Northumberland’s Pinpoint League is thriving, catering for 12,500 young players. “It’s a mini-revival,” the Pinpoint League’s Ian Coates tells Walker. “In five years’ time I think what you’ll see are more local boys and better local boys playing for the big 
north-east clubs.”

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