Search: 'Paul Ince'

Tom Bower, whose investigations helped bring down Robert Maxwell, turns to football in his latest book, Broken Dreams. It left Harry Pearson screaming …

A decade or so ago Paul Kimmage, who would later ghost Tony Cascarino’s autobiography, wrote a book about his experiences as a professional cy­clist. A Rough Ride told of systematic drug use by ri­ders in races such as the Tour de France. In Britain, where bike racing ranks alongside clay-pigeon shooting, Kimmage was rewarded with the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In Europe, where cycling is big news and big bus­iness, however, he was denounced by everybody from fellow riders to sports journalists as a fantasist and an embittered loser. The Irishman had predicted this would happen. There existed, he said, a code of silence within the world of cycling when it came to drug taking, extending from the mechanics to the upper echelons of cycling’s ruling bodies, from the team masseurs to all branches of the media.

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In this extract from the BBC book Football Confidential 2, the reporters from Radio 5 Live show On The Line quiz agent Paul Stretford aout his company's shareholders, people with familiar names like Souness, O'Neill and Keegan

The first thing to meet you after walking through re­­ception into the light, modern offices of the Proactive Sports Group plc is a life-size, wax­work figure of Peter Schmeichel, in full kit, poised to make a save. Initially it is a strange and disconcerting sight but the Dane has been an important figure in the rise of Proactive, one of the UK’s leading football agencies, which its current chief executive, Paul Stretford, started in his basement in 1987. High-profile Schmeichel is just one of the 260 clients the company now has worldwide.

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Wednesday 1 Arsenal stay five points clear but only after a nervous last few minutes in which Chelsea score twice before losing 3-2. “I like to win games like that when you’re tired,” says Arsène, making an excuse even though he doesn’t need to. “It was like watching the tide coming in,” says Howard Wilkinson as Man Utd score two late goals to beat Sunderland 2-1 having trailed for 75 minutes. Liverpool drop down to seventh after a tenth winless match, a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle, but Gérard sticks his chin out, sort of: “I don’t want to commit suicide before the end of the season.” Several fixtures are postponed due to bad weather, and one, Reading v Leicester, is called off at half-time due to a waterlogged pitch.

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Belgium's 2002 World Cup captain has unusual plans for his post-football career: he will be in parliament by the summer, as Paul Knott explains

Of all the top players who left the international stage after the 2002 World Cup, none has been as missed in his own corner of planet football as much as the ex-captain of Belgium and national record holder for farm­ing-related nicknames, Marc Wilmots.

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Brian Kerr may not be the household name some were expecting to be the new manager of the Republic of Ireland, but Paul Doyle is delighted at the choice

“O shite and onions!” James Joyce once bawled when asked about the ongoing troubles in his home­­land. “When is this bloody state of affairs going to an end?” That was in 1920 and the irritant was war; but you can be sure that in recent weeks, were he not worm-fodder, the writer would have lent his haughty voice to those of his many compatriots who were ex­pressing similar sentiments. Because the Roy Keane Affair, regardless of the profundity of its principles, eventually became horribly tedious. And who would have believed it would be the Football Association of Ireland, in a deeply uncharacteristic moment of lucidity, who would consign the whole sorry saga to history and finally refocus Irish football on the future? But that’s just what they did when they named Brian Kerr as the new manager of the Republic of Ireland.

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