Ever wondered how to build a football club? What a typical match day feels like for the players on the pitch and those behind the scenes? From scouting systems to managing the big names (and their egos), merchandise deals to hotel life, the Secret Footballer takes you into the fascinating world of professional football and shows us the hidden side of a world we think we're familiar with. We get the fights and fornication, the revenge stories and scandals; he profiles the legends as well as the backroom boys and the unsung heroes. Funny, shocking and always entertaining, this is the Secret Footballer at his most revealing and irreverent yet.
A candid examination of the inner workings of a football club, from the bestselling anonymous insider, dishing up the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
Cathal McCarron is a Tyrone footballer, talented enough to be nominated for an All-Star twice in the last three years. However, he hid a dark secret for years, a gambling addiction which almost destroyed him. While effectively on the run in London in 2013, his life had spiralled so viciously out of control that he ended up having sex with a man for a gay porn website. After getting paid, he walked across the road and gambled half his earnings in a betting shop. When footage subsequently leaked, McCarron could no longer hide his terrible secret, and keep running from his troubled past. He slowly began the long road back to rehabilitation. After a year out of the inter-county game with Tyrone in 2014, McCarron made a remarkable recovery in 2015, ending the season with an All-Star nomination. His story is a remarkable tale of the hidden demons that often visit and terrorise inter-county players. It also underlines the pressures and expectations so often taken for granted with amateur players. McCarron recalls his journey with searing honesty, from the depths of depression and to the edge of suicide to path taken back to recovery and rehabilitation. He is now studying to be a counsellor, aiming to help people rid themselves of the demons that once almost destroyed his life. The edge to the book is added with McCarron still an active inter-county player. His journey will also take you inside the dressing room of a team with serious ambitions of winning another All-Ireland title. McCarron’s story is unlike any other written by a GAA player before.
*** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A heroic outsider - a pleasure to read.' - The Guardian 'A fulsome evocation of football before the Premier League.' - The i 'Such a good storyteller...joyous.' - Financial Times 'Honest, raw, revealing and very funny. How to live a life and career to the full. Insightful book about the most successful outsider inside football ever...' - Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer, The Times 'Pat is a wonderful one-off...and this is the story of why that is.' - John Murray, Chief Sports Correspondent, BBC Radio 5 Live 'Unusually vibrant and elegant with heroic doses of humour, insight and self-effacement, this is an absolute must-read for the football connoisseur.' - Omid Djalili 'The biggest influence of my professional career both on and off the pitch.' - Graeme Le Saux 'I grew up captivated by Pat Nevin the player. As a man he taught me even more about the beauty of the game. One of football's great mavericks, and Chelsea's greatest players. And he can spin a mean tune too.' - Sam Matterface 'I used to walk miles to see Pat Nevin play football and I'd do the same now to read his thoughts. Always challenging, always entertaining.' - Lord Sebastian Coe 'A refreshingly honest and thought-provoking autobiography. As deftly delivered as some of Pat's ball skills in his 1980's heyday.' - ToffeeWeb Pat Nevin never wanted to be a professional footballer. His future was clear, he'd become a teacher like his brothers. There was only one problem with this - Pat was far too good to avoid attention. Raised in Glasgow's East End, Pat loved the game, playing for hours and obsessively following Celtic. But as he grew up, he also loved Joy Division, wearing his Indie 'gloom boom' coat and going on marches - hardly typical footballer behaviour! Placed firmly in the 80s and 90s, before the advent of the Premier League, and often with racism and violence present, Pat Nevin writes with honesty, insight and wry humour. We are transported vividly to Chelsea and Everton, and colourfully diverted by John Peel, Morrissey and nights out at the Hacienda. The Accidental Footballer is a different kind of football memoir. Capturing all the joys of professional football as well as its contradictions and conflicts, it's about being defined by your actions, not your job, and is the perfect reminder of how life can throw you the most extraordinary surprises, when you least expect it.
In a world where so many books by and about footballers are little more than bland PR exercises, Full Time breaks the mould decisively. Stripping away the facade of what we think life must be like for an international football star, Paul Kimmage reveals a different story when it comes to Irish footballer Tony Cascarino. Scarred by his childhood, haunted by indiscretion and troubled by a secret from his past, Cascarino is struggling to find answers as he speeds towards the most terrifying juncture in sport: the end. As Cascarino opens up about his fears,crippling loss of confidence and sexual indiscretion, no wonder TheTimes voted it one of the Top Ten football books of all time, and Eamon Dunply said of it: 'If it were fiction this book could win the Booker Prize.'
He's back - and this time he's got company. The Secret Footballer has teamed up with one of the most highly respected physios in the game to bring you the stories of a football season through the eyes of someone who has covered over 1000 games in his career and who knows the most intimate details about every player he treats. From the pre-season pressures of a new manager and players who have overindulged on their summer breaks, to witnessing some truly horrific (and sometimes career-ending) injuries; from star players who think nothing of using him as their personal family doctor to revealing some of the more unconventional treatments players choose to experiment with, the physio has truly seen it all. Alongside this privileged glimpse into the physio's world, The Secret Footballer will be telling his own tales of injury, pain and perseverance with his trademark insight and wit.
The wildly entertaining, shocking, brutally honest inside story, from a real football agent Knut Hoibraaten has worked as a professional football agent for a decade. In this book he reveals for the first time the true extent of the craziness behind the scenes. Wild partying around Europe, the truth about the machinations behind the buying and selling of players, a training camp at La Manga with an eye-watering special twist: all add up to the story they didn't want you to read! When football managers in designer suits show off a new player, they want you to believe the acquisition is the culminaton of a process of considered, strategic decisions. The reality is often very different, as Knut Hoibraaten reveals in this sensational look into the secret world of football. Giving a whole new meaning to the term "straight from the heart," Hoibraaten's story will make you laugh out loud as well as nod in recognition. Finally, a window is opened on the the secret world fans have long suspected existed, but never before been able to glimpse. Knut and his story will stay with you long after you've put the book down.
This anthology charts French football's path to the glory of World Cup victory. Offering a behind-the-scenes view, it reveals how France went from being a second-rate team to a major footballing superpower in little more than 20 years. Footballers, coaches, writers and journalists describe the way it was and the way it is. The book reveals the scandals of greedy moneymen, the talented players who failed under pressure, the exemplary youth academy of Auxerre, as well as the winning of the 1984 European Championship and the magic of the 1998 World Cup success. It tells the story of how Cantona became king of England and of Zidane, a Franco-Algerian and arguably the world's best player, of how Platini conquered the Calcio, and why Ginola did not make it to the World Cup.
