Memorable and lucid insights into life as a footballer are rare ? but here are some compelling fly-on-the-wall accounts
Football clubs are notoriously insular institutions which are difficult for the outsider to penetrate. Even in this age of obligatory interviews, players' tweets and reams of internet gossip, informed or otherwise, obtaining a true perspective of the workings of a club is hampered by the filter through which the titbits are dispersed. Whether adherence to a code of secrecy has unambiguous motives such as a desire to maintain commercial confidentiality when so many particulars, if made known, are potential weaknesses for rivals to exploit, or more deliberately obstructive, the result more often than not is fundamentally the same: they only tell you what they want you to know.
Little wonder then that there have been so few accounts that have benefited from the privilege of an access-all-areas dispensation. Two players, Eamon Dunphy in 1974's Only a Game and Garry Nelson with Left Foot Forward 21 years later, have offered humorous, intelligent and outspoken takes on the daily grind of the journeyman's tribulations as careers in lower division football drew to an end.
Both provided lucid insights into a professional's mind ? memorably describing the joy, anguish and insecurity of their trade ? with an authenticity few have subsequently matched. It is a tribute to Dunphy and Nelson that, though they were inside men, their candour and resolve overcame the habitual reticence that preserves the sanctity of their workplace.
The diaries of a season written by those who have never been initiated into the fraternity by dint of their footballing prowess but have nonetheless enjoyed the freedom to gain admittance as an equal are just as rare. Hunter Davies set the benchmark with The Glory Game in 1972, chronicling the fortunes of Tottenham Hotspur from the rigours of pre-season training in which he participated to their victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers in the first Uefa Cup final.
For the first time we witnessed the despair of the defeated player after his mistake had cost his side the game, an emotion he could never show on the pitch. Back in the changing room, after Cyril Knowles's miskick had led to Chelsea winning a League Cup semi-final, Davies wrote of the sound made by the extractor fan: "Its low, insistent hum seemed to reverberate round the walls, getting louder and louder as if trying to drive everyone mad, an Orwell 1984 room, a torture chamber where everyone is face to face with his worst fears. Knowles seemed to be crying. His eyes were red and swollen. His arms were shaking. No one could look at anyone else." It is a scene of abject desolation that illustrated how glib the assumption was that the occupational hazards of swings in fortune ends up desensitising players.
There was romance, too, in the tale of Alan Mullery, the club captain, who was shipped out on loan to Fulham after Bill Nicholson had remodelled the midfield without him but was recalled after an injury suffered by John Pratt and scored goals in the Uefa Cup semi-final victory over Milan at San Siro and the decisive one in the second leg of the final.
Davies travelled with the fans to away games, journeyed to a match in Nicholson's car and reported everything he saw and heard. Bob Wilson, then Arsenal's goalkeeper, reviewed the book for the New Statesman, writing: "His accuracy is sufficiently uncanny to be embarrassing." Davies did his job so well that it felt unlikely that anyone would ever allow a mole to burrow so deeply into the soul and character of a club ever again. But two decades later Joe McGinniss pulled off the same trick with The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro and accomplished it in style, capturing with wide-eyed enthusiasm a town in the grip of a near religious frenzy leavened by scandal, farce and tragedy.
He owed a debt to John Feinstein, the American author of the bestselling A Season on the Brink, a close-up portrait of the Indiana Hoosiers under their mercurial coach, Bob Knight. Feinstein is also the model for Michael Calvin's Family: Life, Death and Football, the latest and most extraordinary fly-on-the-wall account of a football club from its grassroots up.
Calvin spent the entire 2009-10 season with Millwall, moving from detached observer to embracing the club and its ethos, and earning the trust of impressively resilient operators such as Neil Harris, David Forde and Paul Robinson, the dressing room "Guvnors". He talks to the board, staff and at times unforgiving fans, absorbing the culture of Millwall during a season rich in character, drama and plot that ended with promotion to the Championship via victory at Wembley in the play-offs. His exploration of the bonds between community and club and the tireless work done by unsung heroes in making a constructive impact on people's lives act as a redemption story for an author disillusioned with the modern game. Indeed it transforms him so much, he ends up going native as an adopted son of The Den.
The book is full of remarkable people, none more so than Kenny Jackett, the manager. He radiates hard-bitten wisdom but never loses his compassion even though his competitive edge remains razor-sharp. This inspirational man forces you to put your prejudices about Millwall aside and as the year develops the story becomes the antidote to a sense of disgust with the game and supporters' alienation from it.
After Davies published The Glory Game 40 years ago, 91 other clubs took fright and thought, "not bloody likely". It has taken Calvin's family affair to show that letting daylight in upon the magic can change minds in positive ways.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/jan/31/football-books-inside-story
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