Search: ' physio'

Tips and tactics from the ultimate insider
Guardian Books, £7.99
Reviewed by Roger Titford
From WSC 345 November 2015

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We are in the era of 3G pitches and perhaps also 3G football biographies. In the beginning there were gentle offerings such as Goals Galore by Nat Lofthouse which told us who was there but not really how they did it. Then came the grittier school of Eamon Dunphy, Tony Cascarino, Gary Nelson et al who told us both who was there and what it was like, but not at an elevated level in the game and in a milieu that was light years away from today’s Premier League. And now we have the Secret Footballer – an artificial construct I would contend – who purports, credibly enough, to tell us what it’s like today at the top without naming many names.

This is the fourth in the Secret Footballer series or franchise, all allegedly by “the same author”. I have my doubts about that because, like many fans, I have tried to suss the identity from the clues left and hints dropped in previous books and come to the conclusion that the Secret Footballer is a composite character, a screen behind which several can hide. In this volume he even has a mate called the Secret Physio to tell us all about hamstrings and individual training programmes and another, the Secret Psycho, to offer a devastating tip on what to do if you are the fourth penalty taker in a shootout. With this formula the possibilities are as endless as the playing time on a 3G pitch.

Despite this confection I do find the Secret Footballer franchise interesting and valuable as an aid to understanding the environment in which the top players operate nowadays. This volume focuses on the aspects of fitness and playing, with chapters on psychology, formations, nutrition and equipment. Even the chapter entitled “Fashion in football” stays firmly on the pitch with a helpful analysis of the boom and bust in Claude Makélélé-alikes. The examples and arguments are current, covering the decline of 4-4-2 and the 50-50 tackle and a plausible, if mind-boggling, explanation of how Wayne Rooney’s wages are justifiable.

The writing is crisp, slick and businesslike without that edge of awfulness that belongs to the self-help business book genre, and is doubtless helped by the copywriting skills of Guardian Books. While the Secret Footballer is an experienced player I cannot see “him” retiring for a good while yet. Hunter Davies’s The Glory Game (1972) was a classic fly-on-the-wall look at the Spurs team of that era. The dressing-room chatter and the off-the-field personalities of the Premier League player today are more remote to me than that. The Secret Footballer could usefully provide another in the series that deals with all the personal, family, relationship, divorce, money, vendetta, foreign language, agent, commuting and social media pressures that the top player has to deal with – and a full list of what he actually spends all that money on.

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Ian Liversedge: the highs and lows of a football physio
by David Mitchell
AuthorHouse UK, £10.95
Reviewed by Brian Simpson
From WSC 337 March 2015

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Ian Liversedge had a long career as an itinerant football physio working for 20 clubs and 15 managers. The highlights are at the margins of his central story as he encounters famous people who played minor roles in his life. As a young player who didn’t make the grade as a pro he experienced the detachment of Everton’s legendary manager Harry Catterick and later encountered Brian Clough, in decline but still gracious in victory. A quote from Kevin Keegan in his playing days at Newcastle goes someway to explaining why striker Imre Varadi was on his way to accumulating 16 clubs: “OK, Varadi has scored 21 goals this season. I’ve set him up to score 60. How many times has he set me up? None. Fact.”

Less well known but vividly drawn is Accrington’s ex-chairman Eric Whalley. He had played for the club, managed them twice, taken a place on the board and eventually bought them. He funded player purchases but fell out with the local council about the cost of yoga classes for the club’s players. A major focus is the ten years Liversedge spent at Oldham from the mid-1980s, where the chalk-and-cheese chemistry of the taciturn Willie Donachie and the garrulous Joe Royle is captured well. His time at Newcastle also gives an insight into the management pairing of Keegan and Arthur Cox, yet very little of this is entirely new.

A desire to pack in as many stories as possible means that some topics don’t get followed up as fully as they might. For example, there are several incidental comments on the changes that have taken place in the treatment and medical care of players, but these are not considered in any coherent way. Some key points are better illustrated by a simple anecdote, such as when the gap between rehabilitation options at elite clubs and the rest is highlighted by noting that at smaller clubs his best option was sometimes to just take players for a walk and a coffee.

Towards the end of the book he describes meeting old friends from football when the conversation rarely touches on the game but is more about “the scrapes” they shared. But drinking exploits are the sort of tales that can only have been funny to those taking part and possibly not even then. Fans who followed Oldham in the period he describes might feel slightly short changed to find that many at the club followed a motto Liversedge characterises as “win or loose, have a booze”.

His description of players’ behaviour, and his own, is at least frank as he acknowledges its impact on his family life. But there is little reflection on whether the behaviour should have a place within any professional sport, nor an understanding of the way it feeds the negative stereotype of football held by many people. In the end, and despite the strengths of the book, his largely uncritical acceptance of some of what he saw or did leaves an impression in places of an opportunity missed.

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The short life and tragic death of Erich Schaedler
by Colin Leslie
Black & White, £17.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 328 June 2014

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Erich Schaedler was the son of a former German POW who became an integral part of the swashbuckling, but ultimately fragile, Hibernian side of the early 1970s and was capped once by Scotland – as fate would have it against West Germany. To this day his death in December 1985 aged just 36 is surrounded by unresolved and unsettling questions. This biography sets out to find an answer to why his body was found in his car with a single shotgun wound to the head in countryside near his hometown in the Scottish Borders. Though a police investigation concluded there were “no suspicious circumstances” and it is generally regarded as having been suicide, some, including Schaedler’s immediate family, could not accept that he would have taken his own life.

Colin Leslie, the author of this overdue and exhaustively researched appreciation, is in as good a position as any to try to get to some sort of closure on the tragedy, being both a lifelong Hibs fan and currently sports editor of the Scotsman newspaper. Yet even after scores of interviews with former colleagues, friends, acquaintances and Erich’s older brother John he is forced to conclude that a definitive explanation for what happened remains
“elusive”.

Though one of Leslie’s aims may be left unfulfilled, his book also provides a telling reminder of what a genuinely fine footballer the unheralded Schaedler was. As a player with a ferocious dedication to his fitness regime as well as interests in physiotherapy and coaching that were well ahead of their time in the Scottish game, there is testimony after testimony of how, through hard work, he developed from a raw talent into an international class full-back. The “Turnbull’s Tornadoes” Hibs side that he served so well really ought to have registered more major honours than a solitary League Cup final victory in 1972, but they had a gnawing propensity to fall away in their league campaigns and suffered painful defeats to Celtic, by scores of 6-1 and 6-3, in another couple of cup finals. In a later spell with Dundee Schaedler helped the club notch up a couple of promotions and again made it to a League Cup final.

Across the chapters the shadow of what was to ultimately transpire hangs heavily however. Leslie rightly gives space to reflect on the issue of mental health which football, like other areas in society, still struggles to address in a truly open and grown up way. Many of the interviewees mention that “Shades” could be quiet, withdrawn or “deep” but hardly any saw him as someone who might need help. Although attitudes and awareness may be changing it is a dreadful irony one of his team-mates at Dundee, Ian Redford, also recently committed suicide, as covered in WSC 325. Redford’s own reflections on his former colleague’s sometimes introspective moods – “There were a few demons I think, although I have no idea where they came from” – lend a final poignancy to the recurring theme of this 
thoughtful book.

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Ledley King: My autobiography
by Ledley King 
and Mat Snow
Quercus, £18.99
Reviewed by Alan Fisher
From WSC 328 June 2014

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The title of the opening chapter of Ledley King’s autobiography sums it up in two little words: “What If?” He was the perfect contemporary centre-half, with pace, strength, total application and his trademark timing in the tackle as he eased the ball away from onrushing forwards. It was a talent that should have brought him worldwide fame. Instead he spent half his career on the treatment table.

His fortitude in pain and loyalty to the only club he has ever played for has earned him the enduring respect of Spurs fans. An unending saga of breakdown and comeback meant his hopes were rebuilt then crushed as often as his knee, yet King does not show a trace of self-pity; despite agony, disappointment and upheaval at his club, he was grateful for the chance to play.

For virtually half his career King did not train. When his knee was rebuilt, he remodelled his running style. One report suggested that toward the end, his knee was so bad he couldn’t have a garden kickabout with his young son yet come matchday he was often a match for the very best.

Co-author, journalist and Spurs fan Mat Snow utilises a conversational style which gives the book a sense of authenticity, especially in the early passages about King’s upbringing on an east London council estate by a single mother and surrounded by a supportive network of family friends. King has some interesting reflections on the fine margins between success and failure at this level, concluding that attitude and family stability are more significant than ability.

It seems to be out of character to be critical of those around him so expect few revelations. Nonetheless, King sheds some light on the footballing culture differences between Fabio Capello and his squad and confirms years of managerial turmoil at Tottenham, with Glenn Hoddle distant and unable to communicate while first-team coaches Martin Jol and Gus Poyet actively undermined their managers, Jacques Santini and Juande Ramos respectively.

While there’s plenty of interest to Spurs supporters, King played during a largely undistinguished period in the history of club and country so other potential readers may be deterred by a book where the highlight is a League Cup final win and a world tour of physiotherapists. Gradually the dreary routine of daily treatment catches up on body and mind. He plays down the two nightclub altercations that thrust him uncharacteristically into the headlines but there’s no doubt they were linked to the loss of what had mattered most to him since he was a boy – the realisation that he can’t play on and the end of his camaraderie with team-mates. If King has regrets, he hides them well. It’s left to the reader to speculate about those “what ifs?” on his behalf.

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