Football Shorts – serie

'Tony Adams calls it a “celebration of recovery.” It’s a monument to candour too. Gruesome memories come with smiles… The fresh detail in his new autobiography, 1996, adds layers that are both harrowing and redemptive as he goes about the work of helping others.' PAUL HAYWARD, The ObserverIt was the summer of Euro 96 and England was in party mood as the nation hosted a major tournament, revelling in watching Gazza and Co reach the semi-finals. For the national team's captain Tony Adams, though, it masked a misery that had been building all year, with his wife leaving and his children being removed from him as a result of his dangerous and damaging drinking.Following Gareth Southgate's crushing penalty miss against Germany, Adams proceeded to embark on a 44-day bender to drown sorrows that learned how to swim and led him into some seamy, sordid situations. Finally, he could take no more and desperation drove him to quit the booze and get help. A year that had begun in dark despair would end in a new lightness of being.In 1996, Adams revisits in candid, graphic detail that year when football came home but England's thirty years of hurt continued. And, as he reaches his 60th birthday, he reflects with trademark honesty and accumulated wisdom on his own remarkable thirty years off hurt.

Jimmy Armfield was one of the great figures of English football - captain of the national team before Bobby Moore, member of the 1966 World Cup-winning squad, one-club man with Blackpool. Gentleman Jim went on to enjoy a wonderfully rich life and career as a manager with Leeds United, before becoming a broadcaster of warmth and insight, then consultant with the Football Association and the Professional Footballers' Association. In Pantomime Hero, award-winning football writer and author Ian Ridley tells the remarkable tale of when Armfield took over at Leeds after Brian Clough's ill-fated 44 days and came up with a novel and unique idea to restore the morale of a club in turmoil. Around that amazing tale, Ridley also describes a friendship forged through the bonds of cancer with a giant of a man who was already long established as a national footballing treasure at the time of his death in January 2018. This is the first book in the innovative Football Shorts series.

Renowned football writer and Spurs expert Julie Welch brings us a revealing and exhilarating account of the club's roller-coaster journey down the decades through the prism of its key strike partnerships.In 1961, Bobby Smith and Les Allen were the strike duo who led Tottenham to the league and cup double, making them the first club to achieve the feat in the modern era. It set in train Spurs' proud record of memorable strike partnerships whose goals brought glory to the club, rescued it from the doldrums or simply supplied unforgettable entertainment to millions of fans.These strike duos featured some of the greatest goalscorers and biggest personalities in English football history - from the top flight's record scorer in Jimmy Greaves partnering Alan Gilzean, to Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks, Teddy Sheringham and Jurgen Klinsmann and Son Heung-min and Harry Kane.Packed with insight, anecdotes and the recollections of legendary players, managers and supporters, Double Acts brings to life a rich and glorious history.

Namaste, Geezer is a revealing and trenchant memoir by one of England’s top national newspaper reporters, who has seen and covered it all, from the Heysel disaster to World Cups, plus the death of Princess Diana.Most football fans who grew up loving the game in the hooliganism-blighted 1970s probably experienced running from opposition fans at some point. For Shekhar Bhatia, the menacing enemy was within – the nastier, right-wing elements among fans of his own team. Taken to West Ham by his father, who arrived in Britain from India in the late 1950s, young Shekhar just could not understand the hate directed towards rare Asian-heritage fans back then, and has since spent a lifetime steering a path between his loyalty to the Hammers and racism in the game.Often shocking, ultimately joyous, this is a tale of rising above prejudice to fulfil ambitions, in both football and journalism.