Book reviews

Football’s history remains largely untouched by the marketeers – but FIFA are determined to do something about that. Barney Ronay ponders Pelé’s official hot 100 selection

History is written by the winners. Pelé, twice a World Cup winner and the highest-earning 20-years-re­tired sportsman on the planet, is in the process of taking this process to a ludicrous extreme. As part of FIFA’s centennial celebrations the great man has been commissioned to draw up – possibly in biro on the back of an envelope – the “FIFA 100” list of the greatest living players, due to be unveiled this month after a mildly snowballing web-centred publicity campaign. As FIFA-run web­site The-100.com explains: “For the 100 years of FIFA, Pelé has chosen a living footballer that represents the best, most outstanding, crea­tive, play­ers of their generation.”

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Football's history remains largely untouched by the marketeers – but Francis Benali and Matthew Le Tissier are determined to do something about that. Taylor Parkes goes online in search of Jimmy Case's knee joints

TrueGreats.com is a website started by Matthew Le Tissier and Francis Benali (the two chums are pictured in charming my-elbow-on-your-shoulder male-bond­ing pose on the home page), to provide an online com­munity for retired footballers. “We both realised that, although there are many club and fan-based websites for football, there is nothing for those who’ve retired from the game,” they explain. Rather than what first occurred to me – build the world’s most enormous golf course – they’ve opted to set up in cyberspace instead.

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Few clubs can be held responsible for the rebirth of a club, but Gavin Willacy believes Preston would not be where they are now without the Town End, which even enjoyed a moment of life after death

Most readers probably have no idea what the Town End at Deep­dale is. It’s now known as the Alan Kelly Town End, a steep modern stand with the face of Preston’s record appearance-maker usually covered up by season-ticket holders’ bums. Al­though the fans chose to name the stand after Kelly – a Republic of Ireland keeper who played 447 times for the club in the 1960s and 1970s – it is only in the last decade that the Town End has become an integral part of North End folklore.

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Southend United supporters have been given a rare dose of excitement after the Shrimpers reached the final of the LDV Vans Trophy. Steven Heath has already booked his ticket

Southend fans leaving Roots Hall after an extraordinary cup success in February may have reflected on the famous quote from John Cleese’s character in the film Clockwise: “It’s not the despair. I can take the despair. It’s the hope. That’s what I can’t bear.” After years of largely impotent involvement with their football club, this has come to seem like an apposite motto for the average Shrimpers supporter.

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John Charles was arguably Wales's greatest ever sportman. Huw Richards remembers the career of a footballer who could have traded his boots for boxing gloves

Last year John Charles said: “Only grandfathers remember me now.” How wrong he was was shown by well observed minutes’ of silence at venues as diverse as Kidderminster (playing his home town Swansea), Manchester United (v Leeds) and Bologna (v Juventus) and the tribute, moving in its unexpectedness, from Leeds’ extremely ungrandfatherly Alan Smith.

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