Search: 'mental illness'
Stories
Life lessons of a professional footballer
by Richard Lee
Bennion Kearney, £9.99
Reviewed by Terry Staunton
From WSC 303 May 2012
Times are tough during an economic downturn and unless you are one of the elite it is no different for footballers. At the end of the 2009-10 season, after a decade at Watford where he increasingly found himself warming the bench, goalkeeper Richard Lee felt it was time for a change, even if it meant dropping down a division and taking home a slimmer pay packet.
The Tragedy of Robert Enke
by Ronald Reng
Yellow Jersey Press, £16.99
Reviewed by Mike Ticher
From WSC 297 November 2011
Considering young men are a group at high risk of suicide, the number of active footballers who have taken their own lives is surprisingly small. Dave Clement, Alan Davies and Justin Fashanu are perhaps the best known in Britain, all in their declining football years. That makes Robert Enke a rarity among rarities: the Hannover 96 goalkeeper was at his peak, in a season that should have led to the World Cup, when he walked in front of a train in November 2009.
The Autobiography of a Goalkeeping Legend
by John Burridge
John Blake, £16.99
Reviewed by Damon Green
From WSC 295 September 2011
Like the tale of one of those old ladies born in Paris to the sound of Robespierre's guillotine, and eventually run over by a motor car on the Champs-Élysées, it is hard to believe that the two ends of the John Burridge story belong in the same lifetime.