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by John Cross
Simon & Schuster, £20
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 346 December 2015

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Supporters of one of the Big Four Or Five teams each have different ideas why their club, overbearingly large as it might seem, actually has some core value. For Arsenal, there was once a sense of shame even among their own fans that they were one-nil blaggers who added little to the overall value of the game. That has turned round completely under Arsène Wenger.

Although, as many interviewed by John Cross in this latest biography testify, he is perhaps an even worse loser than Alex Ferguson, Wenger holds fast to what is vaguely described as his “philosophy”, which has traditionally consisted of valuing attack over defence, maintaining aesthetic values rather than grinding out victories, imposing your own style of play rather than merely reacting to your opponents.

This is a source of pride to Arsenal fans but also, increasingly, exasperation, one only partly stemmed by the recent two trophies and a softening of said philosophy. His baffling reluctance to spend available funds has also led to some stormy AGMs, with fans suspicious at the amounts they must today shell out to watch their fitfully aesthetic but too often brittle also-rans.

Mirror journalist Cross is not to able to answer the question of whether Arsenal’s relative lack of spending is down to Wenger himself or the club, who have become complacently happy with their cash cow. From the earliest pages, we know from Cross’s admiring tone towards Wenger not to expect any scathing, incisive critiques of his subject; he is far too valuable a contact in the author’s day job.

He begins with an account of how he visited Pope Francis rather than attend to transfer deadline day, in terms inviting us to marvel at the manager’s spirituality and indifference to the mammon of the modern game. The text is similarly lavished with borderline sycophantic tributes to Wenger’s intellect, erudition and integrity, lest this sometimes thin-skinned man take the slightest offence.

The book, however, does yield some intriguing facets of his time at Arsenal, where he arrived in 1996 to bewilderment from its core of bibulous, hard-bitten professionals, whose careers and habits he turned upside down, generally for their own good. Cross is decent on Wenger’s golden years, and details of the new regimen he instilled, drawing on interviews with ex-players such as John Hartson and Nigel Winterburn.

For a man whose hobby as an escape from watching football is generally assumed to be watching football, Cross reveals one or two fun details about the private Wenger; his interest in politics, and his belief that both communism and capitalism are failed systems; his love and aptitude for dancing, which would probably see him progress a long way on a future series of Strictly, for example. He also reveals less palatable aspects of Wenger, such as his occasionally short way with staff, and his snubbing of Gaël Clichy, or examples of his loss of temper with players, such as the time Nicklas Bendtner was taking the piss out of X Factor: “You think there is something funny about losing?” He also reveals how close Arsenal came to not being able to pay their wage bill during a cash flow crisis in 2004.

While Cross’s prose is not exactly silvery, this is about as revealing an account of Wenger’s career as we’re likely to get in his lifetime.

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The secret world 
of José Mourinho
by Diego Torres (translated by Pete Jenson)
Harper Sport, £12.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 329 July 2014

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José Mourinho is a strange, as well as a special, one. He seems quite consciously and gleefully to play up to the stereo-type of a conniving practitioner of cunning tricks and brazen gamesmanship – a living affirmation of the lower morals of the southern European sort, with decent Englishmen being advised to be on their guard and lock up their wives and daughters should he attempt to beguile them with his oily ways. He revels in obnoxiousness, in his fist-pumping touchline displays, his churlish barbs against officials and fellow colleagues. His “specialist in failure” sneer about Arsène Wenger was particularly lacking in grace. Yet, get past his poor etiquette and you have to admire the fine honing of that particular verbal dagger – the word “specialist” had a particular genius when applied to the professorial yet long-time trophyless Arsenal manager.

Behind this mischievous smokescreen of public hullabaloo, you suspect a genius is at work; a master of tactics, albeit that systematically squeeze the joy out of football as an attacking, free-flowing spectacle, as well as a certain psychological understanding of how to handle players, despite never having been one himself at the top level.

This, you would assume, is Mourinho’s secret world and the secret to his success. There’s very little of that, however, in Diego Torres’s exposé of his time as manager at Real Madrid, the period covered exclusively by this book. The author’s contempt for Mourinho bristles on every page – a Machiavellian operator more obsessed with his self-image than the club he happens to be managing at any particular time, at odds with his key players, with too close and unhealthy a relationship with the agent Jorge Mendes, over-promoting players in his fold, alienating those represented elsewhere, unsportsmanlike, disrespectful to his fellow professionals (including a sneaky poke in the eye of an opposite number during a Barcelona game) and ultimately a person with far too high an opinion of himself and his tactical skills.

The book begins with Mourinho in floods of tears when he learns that he’s been passed over for the job of Manchester United manager in favour of David Moyes. Disastrous as that decision was for United, could it be that Ferguson cannily envisaged catastrophe of a similar sort had Mourinho and his ego landed at Old Trafford, with Mendes not far behind? Maybe he had some inkling of the behind-the-scenes goings-on related in Torres’s account.

We read that Mourinho’s tactic was to turn “the control of information into a fine art” – whether to the press, with players briefed heavily on what they were to say in interviews, or to the players themselves, exploiting their fear of being marginalised in the team. However, this only served to create dressing room divisions at Real Madrid, most importantly of all with his captain Iker Casillas. Moreover, his insistence on applying his customised “high pressure triangle” formation regardless of the players he had at his disposal, who he regarded as mere “assembly line” components, frequently backfired, as in a 5-0 thrashing against Barcelona in the 2010-11 season.

There’s an element of literary licence at work; Torres recounts entire, paragraph-long dressing room tirades from the manager verbatim, filled with hysterical insults like “traitors” and “sons of bitches”, clearly fed to him by players on the receiving end of them (there is no shortage of suspects) but which no one could possibly remember word for word. For all that, and the partiality of the author, this account rings and reads true.

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by Simon Astaire
Spellbinding Media, £18.99
Reviewed by Adam Powley
From WSC 327 May 2014

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Major football biographies have taken a bit of a battering of late, with many publishers offering huge advances on books which failed to sell. Now, doubting commissioning editors are all looking for an “angle”. Sol Campbell’s biography, written by Simon Astaire, fits the bill. The headline grabber is inevitably only a small part of the story, but Campbell’s assertion that he was denied the England captaincy due to the colour of his skin has been a 
publicist’s dream.

It is also a serious accusation and one that has received widespread condemnation. One criticism is that it negates the more serious issues about lingering racism in football. It is also challengeable factually as well as being fodder for those who see Campbell as a whinger. As far as this book goes, it’s another example of Campbell’s lifelong grudge about being neglected.

At its heart, for all the extensive memoir of a hugely successful career, the book is primarily about Campbell’s resentments, and in particular the fractured relationship with his late father. Yet for someone so prone to self analysis, he shows a glaring lack of self awareness. He moans about the England manager Steve McClaren failing to call him but leaves his future wife in the lurch by not answering her calls for three months. And he agonises about his father’s distance while all but ignoring his own record as a parent who has had little or no contact with one 
of his children.

This will chime with the many Tottenham fans who still dislike Campbell for his move to Arsenal. There is some welcome context on the build-up to that event, and the pure logic of the move is evident. But his preening conviction – the other extreme of Campbell’s complex character – simply doesn’t countenance that it might not have been the most 
honourable of decisions.

Emerging from a difficult upbringing, Campbell shouldn’t be admonished for his ambition, but doesn’t appear to appreciate the consequences of his actions. He is now playing down the England captaincy accusation, like letting off a firework then complaining about the bang. In a Newsnight interview with non-football fan Jeremy Paxman, the message was hopelessly muddled – a result of Campbell trying to position himself as the intelligent footballer with something profound to say, but lacking articulacy.

Campbell fares better expressing himself via his biographer. He has interesting perspective on his experience at Lilleshall, while the chapter on life at Arsenal under Arsène Wenger and David Dein is enlightening. But the navel gazing overwhelms. The hitherto publicity-shy Campbell is laid bare as needy, introverted, a maddening mix of single-minded focus and debilitating reserve.

For all that, Astaire does a good job of keeping the narrative on track, while extracting genuine insight into playing at the elite level. The passages on the England v Argentina World Cup games convey the sheer intensity these contests generated. The antics of the Munto snake-oil salesmen who hijacked Notts County – and made a fool out of Campbell – make for a bleakly comic contrast.

This, however, is a biography only in name. It would have been productive, for example, to hear from the mother of Campbell’s first child, or what his 11 siblings have to say, yet, over nearly 300 pages, only three of them are even mentioned by name. “Why don’t people understand I’m just different to most professional footballers?” Sol pleads. He just wants to be loved, it seems – but he is hard work to warm to.

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How the Arsenal became l’Arsenal
by Fred Atkins
GCR Books, £18.99
Reviewed by Damian Hall
From WSC 313 March 2013

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There can’t be many football clubs that have a stronger connection to a foreign country than Arsenal do with France. Since Arsène Wenger took over, 23 French footballers have played for the Gunners – often in teams without an Englishman. Between September 10, 1996 and November 1, 2011 the club played only two competitive fixtures without a Frenchman in the team, both of which were experimental line-ups for relatively meaningless fixtures (and one included an unused French sub).

There’s a story to be told here and Fred Atkins is in a good position to tell it, having lived in France and studied at university in Strasbourg, the city where Wenger grew up and gained his oft-mentioned 
economics degree.

The book is logically divided into a chapter for each player and lengths wisely vary – you wouldn’t expect Patrick Vieira to get the same amount of coverage as Gilles Sunu. There’s a foreword by Gilles Grimandi, in which he self-deprecatingly confesses his one Arsenal goal was a mishit cross, but unfortunately there are no fresh interviews. Though tracking down all 23 men would have been a huge job, it means there’s little new here about the players’ times at Arsenal, bar occasional quotes translated from interviews with the French press.

The book’s interest comes largely from the players’ pre-Arsenal careers, such as the comical litany of bureaucratic errors by French football officials, one of which meant William Gallas couldn’t play first-team football for half a season at Marseille. No wonder his tantrums started long before his move to Arsenal. Many chapters are reminders that players’ foibles – Abou Diaby’s injuries, Mathieu Flamini’s perceived disloyalty – were there before they moved across the Channel. Some may enjoy the news that, while playing for Lorient against Bordeaux, Laurent Koscielny was once sent off for fouling future team-mate Marouane Chamakh and the obvious quips it encourages.

The Emmanuel Petit chapter stands out. His life has not been that of the average footballer: he’s struggled to deal with the death of his brother, depression, the USA 94 qualification failure (he played left-back in the defeat to Bulgaria) and periods of debauchery. Atkins also claims Petit drank and smoked throughout France 98. Perhaps more startlingly, after joining Barcelona, manager Lorenzo Serra Ferrer asked him what position he played. Petit almost joined Manchester United instead of Chelsea – and wishes he had.

However, Atkins’s tone is unashamedly parochial. There are puerile digs at Alex Ferguson, a tedious and paranoid rant about refereeing decisions and, apparently, Jacques Santini’s judgment should be questioned simply because he managed Tottenham, while crass speculation on Thierry Henry’s marriage breakdown belongs to the worst of the tabloid press.

Some bigger questions, too, go begging. Has Wenger systematically favoured French players over English players? If so, why? Should Le Prof still be recruiting heavily from Ligue 1 when the French national team are no longer pre-eminent – and when Alan Pardew seems better at it. And how has Wenger’s English seemingly got worse, “a little bit”, over the years?

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How the English Premier League came to dominate the world
by Mihir Bose
Marshall Cavendish Business, £14.99
Reviewed by Huw Richards
From WSC 311 January 2013

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Mihir Bose is an authentic journalistic heavyweight. Before becoming the BBC’s first sports editor he made his mark as Britain’s pioneer of serious sports business journalism. He has been ringside for every major sports story of the past 30 years and ranges well beyond that, with a catalogue including subjects such as Bollywood, the financial crash of 1987-88 and Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose (no relation).

So it is hard to think of anybody better qualified to attempt a definitive account of the Premier League. Sadly the attempt rather fails – maybe he knows too much. Some detail, like the reminder that Sky were forced by smaller clubs on the giants, who generally favoured ITV, is highly relevant. Much more is head-spinningly complex and some – such as what was eaten at important lunches – simply unnecessary.

It is oddly structured, with a long diversion into essays on Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and José Mourinho. None is bad in itself, and Ferguson is vividly portrayed, but in covering such excessively well-trodden ground the narrative loses a momentum it never really regains.

It starts badly with a chapter on football in the 1980s that fails to address the fact that crowds rose steadily from their 1986 lowpoint, making it possible that the Premier League inherited, rather than created, the upturn, and mentions the 1990 World Cup only in passing. If he is to convince that football was irredeemably horrible then he needs better witnesses than Tim Lovejoy and Piers Morgan. Hearing that a teenage Piers was clocked by a pint of piss at Highbury in 1983 will make more readers cheer than wince.

That typifies a problem with sources. Bose is not an unconditional admirer of the league but he appears not to have read its most cogent critics – the bibliography cites GQ and a welter of biographies but nothing by the Guardian‘s David Conn.

He has little time for organised fans and is critical of Manchester United’s followers, while giving plenty of space to City advocates for the Glazers. Those voices are worth hearing but they’ll have to do better than arguing that “If the Glazers walk away from United tomorrow, United is a sustainable business. You haven’t got an uneconomic club like Chelsea”, entirely ignoring that “a sustainable business” is what the Glazers took over.

Similarly, quoting figures to show that Wigan’s turnover is proportionately closer to United’s than it used to be ignores that one club has risen three divisions while the other stayed where it was. Numbers purporting to prove that the Premier League is outpacing its rivals actually show La Liga and the Bundesliga keeping up in absolute terms and making ground proportionately.

Apparently written in haste, this book desperately needed a rigorous editor. There’s a decent read in here somewhere, probably around two-thirds the length plus the index which, unforgivably for a serious factual work, this lacks.

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