Search: 'Paul Merson'

Matt Nation enjoyed a tournament with 1,500 teams from 60 countries, but was disturbed by the precocious antics on show

After a month of the corporate-heavy stodge served up in South Africa, the 2010 Gothia Cup appeared to be just the right sort of light and fluffy dessert to cleanse the football tournament attendee’s palate. In the world’s largest youth team competition, many games took place on what looked like an expanse of waste ground converted into astroturf pitches in the heart of Gothenburg (there was some talk of the playing surface being “the best astroturf in the world”, but only in the same unfounded way as Danish-brewed lagers and English top-flight football are touted as being peerless).

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by Paul Merson
HarperSport, £16.99
Reviewed by Tom Lines
From WSC 292 June 2011

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Most football memoirs carefully ration the racy bits as a way of punctuating the otherwise straightforward retelling of a career. How Not To Be A Professional Footballer does precisely the opposite. Cast adrift with Merse on a seemingly endless sea of lager, cocaine and crumpled betting slips, the sensitive reader ends up desperately scanning the horizon for Alan Shearer paddling towards them aboard an uncreosoted fence panel.

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As Paul Gascoigne ploughs through the worst days of his life, he is totally and utterly alone. But then he always was, reflects Taylor Parkes

“Cries for help” don’t come any more blatant than cancelling a steak on room service but asking them to send up the knife, then attempting to drown yourself in front of the policemen who have broken down your hotel-room door, and sure enough he has been swamped in goodwill. The fact is, most of it is worse than useless (“Gareth Southgate has called on Paul Gascoigne’s friends to save the fallen star in his darkest hour,” reports the Daily Mail, as if that meant anything). While the back pages weep and fret, or offer worthless diagnoses, the news boys dig for gold: Gazza was begging in street, blared the Sun. “He tried to buy a Ferrari then his trousers fell down.” (In case we wondered, the article confirmed that “he was wearing no underwear”.) This reaction, all heat and no light, is as miserably predictable as the breakdown itself.

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Al Needham has met a fair few footballers in Nottingham but the experience has been far from rewarding

Whenever a friend of mine gets into a pub argument about Manchester United (which is often), he relates the following story: when he worked in one of Nottingham’s trendier clothes shops in the early Nineties, the only place that had Timberland boots in stock, Roy Keane came in. After a nod from his manager, my friend mentioned the obligatory 25 per cent discount. “And he didn’t say thank you or anything, he just walked out the shop with the boots under his arm,” my friend says, his face screwed up in a righteous sneer, as he prepares to unleash the killer line. “And he had his fucking jumper tucked into his jeans, the… the twat.”

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My Story
by Kenny Sansom
John Blake, £17.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 258 August 2008 

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Kenny Sansom’s autobiography ought to be a rollicking, tasty read. He was brought up alone in south London by a strong-willed mother, his father having departed family life to work with the Krays. A joker, he appears more proud at times of his Norman Wisdom impersonation than a career in which he won 86 England caps. He also liked a drink – he was a key member not just of Arsenal’s mid-Eighties defence but also their wrecking crew, embarking on many a bibulous adventure with Tony Adams, Paul Merson and so on, fuelled by pints of Chablis and whisky. He played in two World Cups, including the “Hand of God” game against Argentina in 1986, ascribing the defeat as much to Steve Hodge’s forgetfulness when it came to offside traps as to Diego Maradona. He comes across as a likeable, reflective, self-effacing fellow, whose laddishness doesn’t tip over into outright lairiness or TalkSport gobbishness.

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