Archive for Books
Great book by Keith Salmon.
Book available from Amazon.
I’m reading this excellent book by the moment, and I find that it’s a must read for every KOPite.
In “Red Men”, a unique and exhaustively researched history of Liverpool Football Club, John Williams explores the origins and divisive politics of football in the city of Liverpool and profiles the key men behind the emergence of the club and its early successes. The first great Liverpool manager, Tom Watson, piloted the club to its first league championships in 1901 and 1906 before taking his team to the FA Cup final in 1914. Watson and the key members of those early Liverpool teams are analysed in depth, as is the role of the club and its fans in the city at a time when Merseyside balanced self-improvement and cosmopolitanism with almost unimaginable problems of poverty. Liverpool secured consecutive League titles in 1922 and 1923 with the incomparable goalkeeper Elisha Scott as its totemic star and the darling of the Kop. In the ’20s, Liverpool became the first British club to internationalise its playing staff. The club’s next league title came in 1947, but in the bleak ’50s the Liverpool board ruled with an iron fist and controlled the purse strings – until Bill Shankly arrived and won that elusive first FA Cup in 1965. The recent tragedies that have shaped the club’s contemporary identity are also covered here, as are the new Continental influences at Liverpool and, of course, the glory of Istanbul in 2005. Reds is the definitive history of a remarkable football club from its formation in 1892 to the present day, told in the wider context of the social and cultural development of the city of Liverpool and its people.
The Independent wrote the following words:
“The proposed purchase of a football club does not normally dominate the front pages, but then Liverpool are different. The “second team” of many fans, they have inspired more affection among the uncommitted than any other English club.
Their fractious formation in a breakaway from Everton in 1892 and the many glorious seasons from the mid-Sixties onwards are well known, but John Williams has unfashionably chosen to concentrate on the years in between.
Tellingly he calls it a biography rather than a history as he draws the early years from the shadows through largely forgotten heroes such as Elisha Scott, Billy Liddell and their first great manager, Tom Watson. This could be dry fare but Williams brings the social and sporting heritage of the club, and the city, to vivid life.
We cannot know what the future holds for Liverpool but thanks to this admirably impartial, impressively researched account we know much more about their past.”
You can order this book via amazon.
-Amanda
BOOK : We had dreams and songs to sing
 | By Antoine Zammit · Comments |
I came across this great book which I am currently reading, couldn’t wait to share it with you all so here is some information on it. I will do a video review once I finish it but I really like what I read so far, got me hooked.
Book Description
About the Author
Keith Salmon lives in the Isle of Man with his wife Nikki
and his son Charlie.
Born in Liverpool in 1965, just after Liverpool’s first
FA Cup win, the smell of silver polish has never been far
away whilst following his football team – Liverpool FC.
His passion is as strong as ever and the love he has for his team and his city shines through. Football has defined
his path in life and afforded him many wonderful opportunities to travel and meet people from all walks of life.
Kenny Dalglish’s relationship with Liverpool Football Club is one of the great love stories of sport.
From the moment he first set foot in the Anfield dressing room nervously asking for autographs while having a trial at the club, Dalglish felt a passion for Liverpool stir within him. After joining from Celtic in 1977, the supremely gifted striker was embraced by Liverpool fans, for the goals and the glory, and most especially for the three European Cups.
The Kop’s adoration of King Kenny has never ebbed. Every game, they still sing his name. Liverpool fans have never forgotten how Dalglish held the club together through two tragedies, the first at the Heysel stadium in Brussels in 1985 and then at Hillsborough in 1989. Both disasters are explored at length and in emotional detail by Dalglish in My Liverpool Home.
Eventually, for the sake of his health and his family, Dalglish resigned and Liverpool have not won the title since. Although Dalglish walked alone, away from Anfield, in his heart he never really left and has now returned, playing a pivotal role in this turbulent period in the club’s history.
My Liverpool Home is the story of Dalglish’s epic love affair with Liverpool, tracing the highs and lows, the characters, the laughter, the triumphs and the many tears. For football fans, this revealing book about one of the game’s greatest players is a must. For those fascinated by how a very private man suffered after very publicly supporting his community, Dalglish’s emotional story makes compelling reading.
Order here
The book’s release date is September 13th but it is available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk
A Must-Read – “The Fix” by Declan Hill
 | By Amanda Musch · Comments |
This book will forever change the way you think and feel about professional sport.
The Fix is the most explosive story of sports corruption in a generation. It presents compelling evidence that some of the highest soccer matches in the world may have been fixed: European Champions League, Olympic and World Cup tournaments.
Intriguing, riveting, and compelling, it tells the story of an investigative journalist, Declan Hill, who set out to examine the world of match-fixing in professional soccer.
Hill came face-to-face with the multi-billion dollar illegal Asian gambling industry. Over four years, he interviewed more than two hundred people, including professional gamblers, Mafia hitmen, undercover cops, top-level international soccer players, referees, and officials. He met men who claim they have bribed their way into fixing the results of some of the biggest matches in the sport. Initially very sceptical, Hill travelled across four continents to corroborate their stories. He found soccer leagues where mobsters have fixed more than eighty per cent of the games. But most chilling, he met and then was adopted by a small group of match-fixers.In The Fix, Hill explains the structure and mechanics of illegal gambling syndicates, what soccer players and referees do (or not do) to affect the outcome of their games, why relatively rich and high-status athletes would fix games, how and why club officials would bribe the opposition and how they get referees “on their side.” Perhaps most shocking is Hill’s discovery that gambling fixers have successfully infiltrated the game, all the way to the top international matches.
The book, however, is not just about match fixing in soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Throughout the text, Hill uses examples from other sports – tennis, hockey, even rowing – to show that the credibility of professional sport now lies on a fragile foundation, and it provides enough hints to suspect that all sports above amateur level should look nervously over their shoulder.
From the Introduction:
“”Understand how gambling fixers work to corrupt a soccer game and you will understand how they move into a basketball league, a cricket tournament, or a tennis match (all places, by the way, that criminal fixers have moved into). My views on soccer have changed. I still love the Saturday-morning game between amateurs: the camaraderie and the fresh smell of grass. But the professional game leaves me cold. I hope you will understand why after reading the book. I think you may never look at sport in the same way again.”
-Amanda
“Talk don’t run” by Paul Kimmage
| By Amanda Musch · Comments |
I’ve recently finished a book which I’d like to recommend to you. “Talk don’t run” written by Paul Kimmage is an assemblage of interviews with various sport stars which the author did for the “The Sunday Times” during the years 2002 and 2009.
Paul Kimmage has spoken to stars like Tony Adams, Boris Becker, Flavio Briatore, David Coulthard, Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Jackie Stewart, Eddie Jordan, Jenson Button, Rafael Nadal, Pete Sampras, also the former Liverpool FC player Stan Collymore and many more!
The author understands it like none other to speak with the sportsmen and women and disclose their secrets, desires and decision they made in the past. In this book, Kimmage is giving some very interesting answers on questions which a sport fan always wanted to get answered, and also describes some details about the sportsman/woman which the reader often didn’t know. I can only recommend this book.
Paul Kimmage(born 7 May 1962 in Dublin, Ireland) was a professional cyclist before he turned to journalism, twice competing in the Tour de France. His book Rough Ride is widely acknowledged to be the most honest account of life in the professional ranks. He has been named Sports Interviewer of the Year at the past five Sports Journalists’ Association awards.
-Amanda
