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Steer clear of bland autobiographies!

November 18, 2008

With Christmas well and truly on the way, our thoughts will turn to what presents we can get our nearest and dearest . One popular gift idea is books and the football industry certainly produces enough of these for you to be able to find just the right one for you.

Yet on closer inspection, it would seem that the market is flooded with autobiographies by players who really must be short of time. The way I see it is that if players who have reached the top of the national game feel the need to document their memoirs for public consumption then this is all well and good. In fact I have read some wonderfully poignant and entertaining books by the likes of Booby Charlton, Gordon Banks and Paul Ince over recent weeks.

However, there is a growing trend for players to write the autobiographies whilst they are still playing and in some cases before they really have the substance to make such a project viable. Wayne Rooney produced his autobiography a year or two ago, as has Steven Gerrand and his Liverpool team mate Jamie Carragher his blazing his way through the bestsellers list as we speak.

For a purely trivial insight into these players, these sort of works are pretty good, but for an entertaining read which does not regurgitate the same sort of plot over and over again then you are best to avoid them.

No doubt financial factors are the main reasoning behind the autobiographies of current players, but with the literary restraint which the must show in producing it, the actual quality of the discourse is painfully mundane.

So if you are looking for an entertaining read this Christmas, then I would suggest that you focus on the autobiographies of former players rather than those of today.

Written by Ben · Filed Under Premiership, World Football 


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