After Arthur's excellent idea to start a thread on football articles, I thought I'd start a thread on football books.

What do they have to do with performance? It varies fronm book to book, with some having a lot more content relating to performance than others.

I was recently in England. To go into a bookshop there it was an absolute pleasure for Australian students of the game of football. They have more books on football than all other sports put together in almost any English bookshop. Surprisingly, there is a paucity of books on coaching football though.



Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years With Brian Clough - Duncan Hamilton

This is a very interesting and entertaining book. If you don't have a sense of humour you won't enjoy it as much as some others. It is simply the funniest football book I've read. Why? Because Clough is such a great character.

He is probably England's most successful coach. He wasn't greatly into tactics and technique or killing his players on the training track. Clough was good in the way they don't instruct you in coaching courses. His assistant, Peter Taylor, and Clough were a brilliant combination. Taylor was great at spotting talent to develop. Clough motivated them. None of this Dutch tactics and technique for him.

Clough told players," Go out there and play football."

"Express yourself," he said. "Execute a great pass or beat a player". He hated long ball, claiming he could train monkeys to do it better than some First Division teams!!!

If players didn't play well , he would boot then where the sun doesn't shine. For Clough it was a question of how hard and when to boot. He reserved punches to the stomach for Roy Keane and Stuart Pearce.

Clough assaulted spectators of his clubs, was an alcoholic, made Duncan Hamilton drink glasses of scotch in the morning before he would give him a press conference, was a brilliant player himself, gave journalists endless 'gold dust,' publicly called all club officials, presidents etc, as useless nobodies who want to see their names in the paper, was totally immodest, claimed he would have won a World Cup if England had employed him as coach, he was conceited, the list goes on............

He played for England briefly before injury ended his career, took Derby County to win the First Division from nowhere and took Nottingham Forest to two successive European Cup victories.

What is more Clough achieved success with much smaller financial resources than his opposition. He and Taylor bought players when they were nobodies, or disgruntled at a club, then turned them into champions.

I'd certainly recommend this book.


Edited by Decentric: 15/11/2011 05:21:57 PM