The Sports Bookshelf

SPORTS BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS: FOOTBALL BIOGRAPHIES No one would dispute Barcelona's status as the greatest club team of the century so far and two books in 2012 have gone a long way to explaining why the pride of Catalonia came to symbolise both power and artistry in football. Graham Hunter's Barca: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World (Back Page Press) draws on the considerable knowledge of the club Scottish journalist Hunter has accumulated since deciding to base himself in Spain. Hunter was the only English-speaking  journalist to interview Pep Guardiola during his time as coach at the Nou Camp. Yet, perhaps inevitably, Hunter's admirable book is eclipsed by Pep Guardiola: Another Way of Winning (Orion), written by the Spanish journalist Guillem Balague -- who is based in England, as it happens. Balague, well known to English television viewers as one of the presenters of Spanish football on Sky Sports, won the trust of Guardiola in a way that no o

Neville Southall's unvarnished account of his life in football is reviewed with approval by Eric Brown on the Sports Journalists' Association website. The Binman Chronicles , written with the help of Liverpool-born journalist James Corbett , charts Southall's rise from odd-jobbing non-League goalkeeper to becoming a fixture between the sticks for Everton and Wales, in a career that saw him with two League championships, two FA Cups and a European Cup-Winners' Cup, as well as an MBE. Brown is impressed with Southall's honest appraisal of the managers, players and officials he encountered as well as his thought-provoking views on Hillsborough and Heysel, and with how he takes no prisoners in assessing Everton's fall from football superpower to also-rans. "His frank opinions in this book on the many players, managers and officials whose paths he crossed in 30-odd years are entertaining and insightful. Southall’s reflections on the Hillsborough and H