In Episode 24, we discuss A Beautiful Game by Sven-Göran Eriksson. The book was published on 17 October, less than two months after Sven died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 75.     Born in Sweden in 1948, Eriksson lived a remarkable life that saw him working in ten countries in jobs that included national team manager roles on four different continents. Most famous for his five year stint as manager of England, Sven was as much a regular in the country’s tabloid gossip columns as he was...

In Episode 23, we discuss Full Time – the secret life of Tony Cascarino as told to Paul Kimmage. Despite having earned 88 caps for them, scoring 19 goals, the book is famed for the revelation that Cascarino did not in fact qualify to play for Ireland. Although was that really the case or were they just try to grab headlines and move copies of the book?   Twenty-four years after its publication, with Cascarino’s career highlights long forgotten, the book remains a stalwart of lists of sports...

In Episode 22, we review the biography of Manuel Francisco dos Santos - Garrincha to you and I. In a Dylan goes electric moment for the Bookmen, this is our first biography, as opposed to autobiography. And it's a good one.    Garrincha - which means Little Bird - is remembered by Brazil of being even better than Pele. The grandchild of slaves, born with a curved spine, he led Brazil to their first world cups - in 1958 and 1962. '62 was also the year he met samba star, Elza Soares and left...

In Episode 21, Al and Johnny review With Clough by Peter Taylor, the book that is believed to have created the rift between the two men that ultimately led to them parting ways and not talking for seven years before Taylor's death in 1990.   The pair had played together at Middlesborough. When they met, Taylor was a jobbing sub keeper and Clough was being overlooked by a team that found his ego largely outweighed his ability on the field. In Taylor, Clough found a champion, who canvassed for...

After a couple of technical glitches, it's Episode 20 of the Ademola Bookmen Podcast. And to mark this (kind of) milestone in our podcasting journey, we have indulged Al by delving into the mind of Brian Clough, Nottingham’s most famous man not in tights.   After being forced to retire following a stellar career as a second division striker, Clough became the youngest manager in the football league, when he took over Fourth Division Hartlepools in 1965. It was a less than glamourous beginning...

In Episode 19, the Ademola Bookmen Podcast takes an ecclesiastical turn with our review of God’s book – Robbie Fowler’s, My Autobiography.   Kop legend and the eighth highest scorer in the Premier League, Fowler notched a total of 183 goals for his boyhood club Liverpool who he left in reasonably acrimonious circumstances in 2001 only to return again in 2006. While he wasn’t scoring goals, Fowler was often getting himself in trouble albeit for more cheeky antics than anything else. Despite...

It’s Episode 18 and its Johan Cruyff’s My Turn for the Ademola Bookmen Podcast. Join us as we take a trip through the life of arguably the best influential person in the history of football. Cruyff won the European Cup three times with Ajax, the team whose stadium he grew up across the road from. He also invented the modern game of football with the Total Football of the Netherlands in 1974 and went on to build the footballing cathedral of Barcelona, to borrow a line from his protégé and...

It’s Episode 17 and we are reading Boyeln Boy by Mr. West Ham himself, Mark Noble. Having been released in November 2022, this is by far the most recent book we have reviewed. Noble famously played for only one club (if you don’t count the time he spent at Arsenal, Hull, and Ipswich) but this book is perhaps most memorable for the revelation that he’s really a Man United fan.   Putting that juicy morsel to one side for a moment, Noble played a million times for West Ham and never for England...

Episode 16 focuses on the life and times of that most overlooked of the Class of 92, Robbie Savage. Less famous for his time as an underweight and underscoring striker in the Man United Youth Team than he is for his displays as an all tackling, all bullshiting midfielder for Leicester, Birmingham and Blackburn and others, Robbie is by his own admission something of a marmite character. Throughout his 2011 book Savage! (complete with exclamation mark in the title) Robbie says that people...

With a career in English football going all the way back to 1967, Neil Warnock has traveled to every corner of the country. In his 2013 book, The Gaffer – The Trials and Tribulations of a Football Manager, Warnock outlines his view of the football world. It’s an old fashion view, in many respects, but a romantic one too.   Less an autobiography than an insight into the day-to-day running of a Championship/Premier League team, the book covers Warnock’s likes (wingers, Scott Parker, his son...

James Milner's first appearance in the Premier League was as a substitute for Manchester United's new technical director, Jason Wilcox. He is that bloody old. 634 Premier League appearances later, he may soon takeover Gareth Barry as the player with the most appearances of all.  In 2019, he wrote Ask a Footballer, which is not so much an autobiography as it is a collection of thoughts - musings even - on the life of a Premier League footballer.  Ultimately, the thing that most people...

In Episode 13 we read about the life and times of the chicken licking, Marseilles fan kicking, Patrice Evra.   Born in Senegal, one of 24 children (not a typo), and raised in the meanest streets of Paris, Evra won five Premier Leagues with Manchester United and two Scudettos with Juventus. He also has the less enviable accolade of being the player who has lost the most ever Champions League finals taking (but not taking home) four losers medals to go with the one winners medal he got for...

Arsene Who?  In Episode 12, we review our first book by a manager. He may have been a stranger when he arrived in England in 1996 but he is no stranger now. In his 22 years with Arsenal, Wenger went from nobody to managerial royalty, with a turn towards the end as the most hated man in North London, or at least so it seemed at the time.  Is this the sex-filled page turner that Al has been calling for since we launched the good ship Bookmen? Tune in to find out. Thanks to my friend Samyak for...

Who better to follow Diego Maradona than the Aldershot Hotshot Steve Claridge? Probably most famous for scoring the goal that got Leicester up to the Premier League in 1996, football's fruit and veg man played for 24 (by our count) clubs in a career that spanned four decades. Throughout that period, he traveled around in battered cars as he commuted from his parents house in Portsmouth to clubs all over the south and southeast, earning himself a reputation for tardiness and for having the...

Episode 10, the magic and mayhem of Diego Maradona. In this episode, Al and Johnny slalom their way around flailing defenders and through the life of arguably the best and certainly the greatest player of them all. Written in 2004, El Diego examines the life of a boy from Villa Fiorito in Buenos Aires who conquered Italy with lowly Napoli and the world in the blue and white of Argentina.  Includes tips on how to beat a goalkeeper in the air...  

In Episode 9, we take a tour on an open top bin lorry with Neville Southall's The Binman Chronicles back to a time when Everton FC were riding high at the top of the English football pyramid. In a career that brought him such highs as two league wins, Southall also experienced the lows (or at least, the lowers) of playing in the basement of English football with teams like Bury, Torquay, Southend and Rhyl in a career that began in the 70s and ended in the 2000s.  A Wales and Everton legend...

In Episode 8, Al and Johnny visit the first literary work by Peter Crouch, the all volleying, sometime header-ing, everyman of English football. At 6ft 7 inches, Crouch is the 3rd tallest player ever to play in the Premier League and while he ended his career as a universally liked person, his road to stardom started with regular abuse from fans, including his own. So bad was the guff that he received for his unusual body shape, his father ended up in physical fights with fellow matching...

In the introduction to his Back from the Brink, his 2006 autobiography, Paul McGrath is described by his ghostwriter, Vincent Hogan, as "undeniably Ireland's best loved sportsman". In Episode 7 of the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, Al and Johnny wrestle with what must surely be one of the heaviest books in the football canon. The book, which won both the William Hill and Boylesports sports books of the year in Ireland in 2006, covers McGrath's heartbreaking childhood as an orphan in a series of...

With Ademola Lookman plotting a course to the final of the African Cup of Nations where he may (fingers crossed) find himself taking on Ivory Coast, the Ademola Bookmen Podcast bring you our AFCON special.  Didier Drogba, the greatest Chelsea player of all time according to Chelsea fans. A scorer of great goals - that one against Liverpool in 2006 comes to mind. A scorer of big goals - the first player to score in four FA Cup finals and the man whose penalty won Chelsea their first ever...

In 2016, as his playing career was coming to an end, Joey Barton published his autobiography. Titled "No Nonsense", the book takes us through Joey's turbulent childhood in Liverpool; being spurned by Everton, the team he supported as a boy; and through his professional career with teams including Manchester City, Newcastle United, and Marseilles. Barton's years as a player were punctuated by regular controversies on and off the field, including a 74-day stretch in prison following a violent...

South London icon and Arsenal/Palace legend Ian Wright's book has such heft that it took us two episodes to get through it. Join Al and Johnny as they wander with Ian through the streets of Brockley, the gates of Chelmsford prison, all the way up the steps of Wembley Stadium, and right into the hearts of (many although not all) football fans everywhere. This is Part II in which Ian tells us all about London in the 70s and 80s. 

South London icon and Arsenal/Palace legend Ian Wright's book has such heft that it took us two episodes to get through it. Join Al and Johnny as they wander with Ian through the streets of Brockley, the gates of Chelmsford prison, all the way up the steps of Wembley Stadium, and right into the hearts of (many although not all) football fans everywhere. This is Part I, in which Ian scores goals and wins trophies. 

"It was a fairytale and I was Zlatan". These are the final words of the Zlatan book, described by the Guardian as the greatest ever football biography. Is this just more Zlatan hubris or is I am Zlatan the literary equivalent of an overhead kick from 50 yards out? Listen to hosts Al and Johnny as they wrestle with this most pertinent of questions right at the juncture of football and literature. 

In the first episode of the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, hosts Al Bond and Johnny Coughlan tackle the literary heft of the Jamie Vardy story. The skittle vodka swilling goal machine takes us from the lows of the English 8th tier to the highest of highs, the top of the Premier League. Is it worth a read? Listen & find out.