Lad Lit Book Reviews: I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović

If Zlatan Ibrahimović could sum up his book in one word, I’m pretty sure he would call it awesome. After all, this is the word that Zlatan refers to himself as on no fewer than 104 times within the first three pages! And if I’m completely honest, I tend to agree!

This is much more than a football autobiography. Of course it charts his incredible footballing journey from Swedish outfit Malmö to the dizzy heights of European giants Ajax, Juventus, Inter, Barcelona, AC Milan and Paris St Germain, but the heart of this story is that of a poor child of immigrant parents.

Growing up on the tough streets of Rosengard, Zlatan paints a fairly bleak childhood in terms of poverty, where stealing bikes was seen as nothing more than an everyday pastime and imitating a police officer with a shampoo bottle to pull someone over (yes, he actually did this!) was merely just a bit of fun. Caught in between a bitter divorce between his Bosnian Muslim father and his Croatian Catholic mother, it was Zlatan’s talent as a football player that shone through and would act as he escape mechanism to a world that was totally out of reach for people on the estate in which he lived.

While other youngsters played football to the strict no-nonsense Swedish approach, Zlatan was more concerned with imitating his Brazilian heroes who’s videos he would study to perfect their wonderfully crafted samba skills. Even when parents at the local football club where Zlatan played started a petition to rid Zlatan and his selfish exploits on the football pitch, he was undeterred in his approach to the beautiful game.

It is a stubbornness and confrontational attitude that would serve Zlatan well throughout his career, if not making the odd enemy along the way. In the very first chapter of the book Zlatan accuses legendary Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola of being a ‘creepy control freak’ and later on as a man who was afraid of Jose Mourinho with ‘no balls’. That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book that pulls no punches.

Sandwiched in the middle of all of this are those wonderfully classic Zlatan moments of magic, mayhem and mastery on and off the football field. When a young Zlatan was informed that Southampton was interested in acquiring his services he bluntly responded with: “What the fuck! Southampton! Is that my level?” Or his poetic comparison of playing for two of the modern games greatest managers: “If Mourinho lights up a room, Guardiola draws the curtains.” And of course the modest Zlatan quotes that range from “We won the UEFA Supercup, I was awesome” to “An injured Zlatan is a properly serious thing for any team.”

But just like that other sporting great Muhammad Ali, who set the standard for could talking the talk and walking the walk, Zlatan backs up all of his bravado by delivering the goods. After all, here is a man who has won league titles at every club he has played at, including an eight-year winning streak that took in championships in Holland, Spain and Italy. So when this man tells you that “What John Carew does with a football, I can do with an orange” you tend to listen.

It is fair to say that I Am Zlatan Ibrahimović will whet the appetite of every football fan as it not only details a great story of an underdog rising to the very top, but it intrigues with tales and insight of some of the game’s greatest names. Added to the mix his youth and background makes for one of the best – if not the best – football biography I’ve ever read.

If I was asked to sum this autobiography  up in one word, I’d literally take a leaf out of Zlatan’s book and call it awesome.

Lad Lit Book Reviews: I Am The Secret Footballer

Football has never been bigger – in terms of both finances and global status. Players are like rock stars from your Ozzy Osbourne’s (Luis Suarez – likes to bite things) to your Bono’s (David Beckham – does a lot for charity y’know) and your Donny Tourette’s (John Terry – no one likes him) to your Liam Gallagher’s (Joey Barton – talks a good game and likes a punch-up).

If the football field is a theatre then the media tales we hear is the pantomime and we’ve become as hungry for all the on-field antics as we have with those off-field. The almost 24-hour coverage of the beautiful game makes us feel like we have almost open access to the inner-goings on at our clubs, but the truth is the truth is there has never been such a wider divide between players and fans as there is today.

That is what makes I Am The Secret Footballer so intriguing. Even before this book came out, this mystery player has been revealing top secret information about the inner sanctum of the Premier League and the lives that revolve around it in his column for The Guardian. Most footballer’s autobiographies are rarely that open, maintaining that What happens in the dressing room, stays in the dressing room stance, especially if they are still playing.

But in this book, the Secret Footballer is more than happy to hold the door wide open and let us walk in to explore all manners of everything football from managers to players and the media to money. He talks candidly about players contracts and what the atmosphere in the dressing room is really like.

And then there is the bad behaviour. For every scandal that makes it on to the front pages of the tabloids, there appears to be double the amount we never hear about. His stories about one footballer’s wife and another married player openly getting jiggy in a Dubai swimming pool or the time the his team had an interesting altercation with a bunch of Barcelona players at a Las Vegas strip club make for more than just an interesting read!

Still, I couldn’t help but think as I read the book that he was always being totally open.  For example, the player is clearly married or has had a long-term partner, so when he regales stories about wannabe WAGs throwing themselves at footballers (one great story is when a girl is ashamed of herself for going back to sleep with a Championship player!), he is always quick to distance himself from any wrong-doing despite the fact some of his stories involve him going back to hotels with these women.

For the most part he is honest and open, and discussion around his identity continues to grow. A recent website set-up by fans of the column believe they have ‘unmasked’ the player to be current Sheffield United striker Dave Kitson after matching certain criteria within the book to the former Stoke City and Reading player.

Whoever he is, he has written a must-read book for all football fans who want to know what really goes on in the world of a top-level professional footballer.

Lad Lit Book Reviews: Gazza: My Story by Paul Gascoigne

At a time when English football fans can only look on with envy at the types of players the rest of the world seem to be able to produce, I decided to pick up a copy of Gazza: My Story and wonder what just might have been.

The result was far more frustrating than enjoyable as I found myself shaking my head like a disappointed father more times than laughing at the ridiculous situations Gazza got himself into during a playing career which was wrecked by injury and self destruction.

Paul Gascoigne was the most naturally gifted British player since George Best, and he captured our hearts at Itlalia '90 with his skillful displays and of course those semi-final tears. And despite flashes of brilliance over the next decade or so, Gazza would become more famous for his front page headlines rather than those on the sports pages.

Don't get me wrong, the story is told in that same daft and cheeky tone we all fell in love with in the first place. The one that made it so easy for us to all forgive Gazza far too often. But it's also told in a way that says he's learned nothing. There is no doubt that Paul Gascoigne loves the game of football, but the further I got into this book the harder I found it to feel sorry for him after he continued to screw up one chance after another. 

This book rarely tackles some of Gazza's major problems head-on, and instead much of his antics are painted in a boys will be boys way to almost justify it. The stories are funny, from Gazza climbing into a fish tank at a Rome restaurant to pick which lobster he wanted to eat to stealing a bus and taking all the passengers for a ride! But all the time I just kept thinking 'you should have been the greatest.'

It makes it even harder watching the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi (heck, even the Welsh have Gareth Bale!) perform magic on the pitch. We should have those memories of Gazza creating havoc to defences all over Europe. There should be more Colin Hendry ball-flipping-and-volleyed goals for us to look back on. Instead all we are left with are fleeting moments of genius that all seem far too long ago now. These types of players come along once in a generation if we're lucky and we had one, but he just pissed it all up the wall.

What makes it worse is that you're still willing him on throughout the book even though you already know the outcome.I wept along with him in 1990 when he took us to within a penalty shoot out of our first World Cup final since 66. I held my breath when he was inches away from scoring the Golden Goal that would have sent us into Euro 96 heaven. And I was as shocked as any England player when Glenn Hoddle left him out of the World Cup 98 squad.

But at the end of the day, I like my books to have some sort of happy ending, and this book doesn't really have that because of the fact that Gazza is still battling those well-publicised demons.

Lad Lit Book Reviews: Be Careful What You Wish For by Simon Jordan

If you have gone and watched your football team play against Crystal Palace in the last decade, chances are you would have chanted “Simon Jordan is a w*nker” alongside 10,000 or so of your fellow fans at the top of your lungs.

Perhaps this is not the best endorsement for Simon Jordan and his book, but how many other football chairman can you think of that was more controversial, more outspoken, and more blonde than the former Eagles owner?

Palace fans loved him, opposition fans loved to taunt him. The perma-tanned self-made millionaire made his fortune in the mobile phone business and by the age of 32 he was the youngest owner of a football club. Ten years and £35m later he had lost it all, but what a decade he had left in his wake.

You might not think that Jordan has much more to say in this book that he hasn’t already aired publicly such was his inability to keep his mouth shut in front of reporters or a TV camera, but that certainly isn’t the case.

What is refreshing about this book compared to other football autobiographies is that we get a different perspective on the crazy world of top-flight football. Never one to be a shrinking violet, Jordan is unrelenting with his attacks on players, managers, agents, and other chairman (he once said: “If I see another David Gold interview on the poor East End Jewish boy done good I'll impale myself on one of his dildos).

I applaud his tenaciousness to try and turn his beloved Crystal Palace into a top flight contender, but at the same time I can’t help but shake my head at his insistence to continue to throw millions of pounds at something without considering the consequences. It is a bit like lending cash to your best mate who you know is rubbish with money; you know you’ll never get the money back but you keep trying to help out. Another classic case of an accomplished businessman leaving his business acumen at the turnstiles.

Jordan is certainly lives up to the hype of a big-time Charlie as he talks about his Spanish villas and private jets, but so what? He earned the right to live that lifestyle, and how many more football chairman do you know who dated supermodels? Whatever your opinion of him, his time in football certainly made things interesting.

He battled relentless against the system, creating enemies in every corner of the football family from senior members of the FA to Millwall and Birmingham fans and to fellow chairman (former Charlton chairman Richard Murray challenged him to a fight) and the managers he hired and fired (eight managers would come and go during his tenure). That is not to say that Jordan did not have his supporters and friends in football, but he wasn't afraid of who upset along the way.

In amongst all the bravado and the self-gratification is a very insightful look at the parts of football we as fans don’t normally get exposed to, and after reading this book I truly believe Jordan wanted to make a difference in football and fought a good fight. Unfortunately for him it wasn’t good enough and not only did he lose a fortune, but football in general is probably a lot poorer for the loss of another great character.

As a football fan, I found this a really enjoyable read. Football is a bit like a pantomime or a soap opera and the roles of those characters are played out beautifully in this book. We have the implosion of ITV Digital, the Iain Dowie court case for fraudulent misrepresentation (when Jordan issued Dowie a writ during his press conference as he was being unveiled as the new Charlton manager), and of course the bitter downfall that nearly dragged Palace into the football graveyard of obscurity. Unfortunately for Jordan it was his lone tombstone that was consigned to football folklore.

Lad Lit Book Reviews: Hitman by Bret Hart

If you watched wrestling in the 80s and 90s then you are going to frickin’ love this book! I can still vividly remember the moment I was exposed to the World Wrestling Federation for the first time. I must have only been 6 or 7 at the time when I religiously watched the Professional Wrestling Show on World of Sport every Saturday afternoon.

However, on one particular Saturday the powers that be at ITV decided not to put its viewers through the delights of obese men bursting out of their leotards, and instead treated us to a rare bout of American Wrasslin’ and boy did addiction take hold of me after that first hit! I’d never seen anything like it before. These larger than life cartoon characters slammed and suplexed the hell out of each other. Hell, I didn’t know what a suplex was before seeing ‘The Million Dollar Man’ Ted DiBiase taking on Hulk Hogan.

And that is where my love affair began. Every week I would tune back in, hoping against hope that they’d put the stars from the U.S. of A back on TV! Occasionally I got my wish, and I’m sure Rupert Murdoch made an absolute fortune selling satellite dishes to parents of children who had begged them to sign up for Sky so they could get their regular WWF fix.

Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart was part of the Hart Foundation with Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart when I first started to tune in, and I watched his career sky-rocket from tag team titles to Intercontinental titles and finally the big one, the World Title! I was there at Wembley in 1992 when he took on the British Bulldog in one of the greatest SummerSlam matches of all time, and I watched on TV when his younger brother Owen tragically lost his life in the ring. I remember the now infamous Screwjob against Shawn Michaels which led to his stint with the WCW.

And it's all in this book! It was like taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane as so much of my childhood, teenage, and young adult life was spent watching the WWF!

Hart delivers expertly from what it was like growing up in a wrestling family in his father Stu's 'dungeon' to making his breakthrough and then becoming a global star. All my old favourites were in there and it was a strange, funny, endearing, and sometimes heart-wrenching read.

There are too many stories to mention, but snippets include how Brutus Beefcake was ridiculed for carrying around Hulk Hogan's bags, my hero the Ultimate Warrior being hugely unpopular in the locker room, and the sad stories of wasted talent and steroid abuse from the likes of the Dynamite Kid.

This book is quite simply as cool as the shades Hart used to hand out to lucky fans, as colourful as his pink tights, and as enjoyable as seeing Vince McMahon wince in the Sharpshooter. If you're a fan of wrestling from that era this is a no brainier! It's the best book about wrestling there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be!

Lad Lit Book Reviews: Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby

I can remember the exact moment I fell in love with football; and I mean really fell in love with football. I can still remember crying my eyes out as an 11-year-old boy having just seen my team Everton lose in the FA Cup Final to our bitter rivals (They play in red - I still can't even bring myself to utter their name...)

Those tears signified a love affair that still burns strong 24 years later. At that point I realised that life (and weekends in particular) would never be the same again. This football club had my heart, and despite the fact they would break it countless times over the years, I would always go back because, just like a drug addiction, the high you got from the good times were so good that you simply can't ever turn your back on them.

What Nick Horby has done in Fever Pitch is capture all of that emotion of the pain and joy that football brings, and put it down on the pages of a book and delivered it like a group of hardcore footy fans having a chat over a pint in the pub on a Saturday afternoon after the match.

You have got to be a lover of the beautiful game to truly appreciate and enjoy this book. Written in an autobiographical style, Hornby uses the backdrop of his obsession with Arsenal FC to recount his life story from an 8-year-old boy on the terraces with his father, right up until what was arguably the most exciting climax to a football season in 1989 when a last-gasp Michael Thomas goal snatched the championship title for the Gunners straight out under the noses from the team who's team name I can't say!

Everything that happens in Hornby's life - from his family to girlfriends to his education - revolves around football.Purists of the game will love this book, especially those who remember a time when money didn't rule with an iron fist, and the divide between players and fans was not as large as the astronomical sums of money they earn today.

But if you have little or no interest in football (or if you're a Spurs fan!), then you are probably best picking up another of Hornby's novels because this is going to be lost on you!