"Lord, I don't ask that I should win, but please, please don't let me finish behind Akabusi."
England football
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the biography 1872-2022, Paul Hayward, Simon and Schuster, 2022 ISBN 978147 1184 345
An excellent book to read in the World Cup year, or any year. The book, which tells the story of the England football team over a period of 150 years, falls into two halves for any reader - the bit that you can remember at the bit before your time. I initially started reading the book in the middle, at the point where I had lived through the event described.
A strength of the book is the analysis of the different England managers:
Don Revie: “Revie is among the hardest England managers to place. He was a romantic and a cynic, an ambitious pessimist, a manager who embraced self-expression but sought refuge in graft and self-sacrifice. He seemed confused, conflicted.”
Glenn Hoddle “was an artist among artisans, then a spiritualist manager in a godless age. He was tactically astute”.
His demise was blamed on the book that he wrote, losing the dressing room and karma. The Eileen Drewery affair is discussed in detail.
There is an interesting discussion of England’s golden generation of players (2001-6) - Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Owen etc. On the Lampard, Gerrard, Scholes dilemma, the author comments that having too many good players was a novel excuse for not winning any trophies.
There are also some lovely stories of the FA as it was, such as World Cup winning manager Sir Alf Ramsay, seeing a stack of presentation souvenir drinks mats and asking if a set could be sent to each of his staff. "Oh no, they are only for FA council members” was the answer!
There is an excellent chapter on black players and the issues around racism and another on the hooliganism which came to be associated with the England team at one time.
At 600 pages, it is quite a read but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The chronological chapter arrangement makes it easy to dip in and out.