Just One More Goal

Football had changed utterly over the last few decades, and David Pleat has watched its transformation from the inside. At this book's heart are Pleat's three spells at Tottenham Hotspur working for three very different chairman: Irving Scholar is smooth and autocratic. Alan Sugar cannot understand why the economics of football do not correspond to the ones he learnt running stalls in Clapton Market, and Daniel Levy, a man whose reluctance to give interviews in his two decades running Tottenham has made him a figure few really know. The book opens when the nine-year-old David is watching the 1954 World Cup final on television and when Helmut Rahn scores the winner for West Germany, his mother starts shouting at the screen in Yiddish, stupefied that nine years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Germans could be crowned world champions. This is not a "jumpers for goalposts" book laden with fake nostalgia. Rather, it is dripping with colour and personality; detailing personal stories of the bribery, racism, violence, cynicism and complacency that infected English football before the big money came into the game, and what has happened to football since. With a stellar cast including Glenn Hoddle, Paolo di Canio, Harry Redknapp, Brian Clough, Graham Taylor, Sir Alex Ferguson, George Graham, Elton John, Harry Kane, Sol Campbell Gareth Bale, Billy Wright, Ken Bates and Terry Venables, Just One More Goal is the acutely observed story of the development of modern football, as seen through the eyes of one man.

Auteur

David Pleat has been manager of Tottenham (four times), Luton (twice), Leicester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Nuneaton Borough. As a footballer he played for Nottingham Forest, Luton Town, Shrewsbury, Exeter and Peterborough.