Balls by Paul Brown

Balls by Paul Brown

Balls is an eclectic collection of amazing true stories from the world of football, revealing the bizarre and hilarious reality behind the beautiful game.

Favouring left-field over legend, the book celebrates colour-blind referees, colourful commentators, dodgy kits, dodgier haircuts, footballers called 'Primrose', players with prosthetic body parts, dangerous goal celebrations, suicidal own goals, pathetic penalty misses, God-fearing goalkeepers, gun-toting fans, shocking scandals, horrendous tragedies, bung-taking managers, UFO-spotting chairmen and loopy matches involving animals, robots and Nazis.

Recalling the antics of wayward geniuses like Paul Gascoigne, Diego Maradona and George Best, the book profiles football's craziest and most colourful characters:
• What possessed a World Cup superstar to kidnap 120 Cameroonian pygmies?
• Which ex-goalkeeper genuinely believes he is the Son of God?
• Why was a former Southampton full-back offered the throne of Albania?
• Was a former Everton striker really hung for stealing a sheep in Australia?
• And whatever happened to Maradona's fake rubber penis?

Humorous and irreverent, the book presents hundreds of stories in chapters on sex, drugs, violence, rock 'n' roll and more, Balls is an unashamed celebration of the mad, bad and stupid aspects of football - the greatest game in the world.

'The best of the bunch' - Sports Books of the Year

* The Independent *
'Football has been given compendiums of curiosities before, but surely none so comprehensive, so remorseless as this. . every page teems with anecdotes' **** * FourFourTwo *
'One must marvel at the research which goes in to compiling a book like this, with information culled from all over the world. Full of humour and irreverence, this is one football book that is guaranteed to raise the reader's eyebrows'.

Paul Brown is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for magazines such as FourFourTwo. His previous book, Black & White Army, was described as a 'Geordie Fever Pitch'. He lives by the banks of the River Tyne and is a long-suffering supporter of Newcastle United.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781845960636
ISBN 10	1845960637
Title	Balls
Author	Paul Brown
Series	Mainstream Sport Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Transworld Publishers Ltd
Year published	2005-10-06
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.