No Hunger In Paradise: The Players. The Journey. The Dream

Author Michael Calvin

Format Paperback | 464 pages

Dimensions 129 x 198 x 29mm | 319g

Publication date 01 May 2018

Publisher Cornerstone

Imprint ARROW BOOKS LTD

ISBN10 1784756113

ISBN13 9781784756116

内容简介

Award-winning author of The Nowhere Men and Living on the Volcano is back to complete his football trilogy with a new book that tells the inside story of becoming a professional footballer.

"What's your dream, son?"

A six year-old boy, head bowed, mumbles the eternal answer: "Be a footballer...." Steadman Scott, football's most unlikely talent scout, smiles indulgently, and takes him in from the street. He knows the odds. Only 180 of the 1.5 million boys who play organised youth football in England will become a Premier League pro. That's a success rate of 0.012 per cent.

How and why do the favoured few make it? What separates the good from the great? Who should they trust - the coach, the agent or their parents?

Michael Calvin provides the answers on a journey from non-league grounds to hermetically sealed Premier League palaces, via gang-controlled sink estates and the England team's inner sanctum. He interviews decision makers, behavioural specialists, football agents and leading coaches. He shares the hopes and fears of players and their parents. He exposes bullying and a black economy in which children are commodities, but remains true to the dream.

作者介绍

Michael Calvin, one of the UK's most accomplished sportswriters, has worked in more than eighty countries, covering every major sporting event, including seven summer Olympic Games and six World Cup finals. He was named Sports Writer of the Year for his despatches as a crew member in a round-the-world yacht race and has twice been named Sports Reporter of the Year.

He is a bestselling author, whose book The Nowhere Men won the Times Sports Book of the Year prize in 2014. He became the first author to receive the award in successive years, when Proud, his collaboration with former Wales and British Lions rugby captain Gareth Thomas, was named Sports Book of the Year in 2015.

In the same year the second book of his football trilogy, Living On The Volcano, was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize. No Nonsense, his collaboration with Joey Barton, was nominated for the award in 2016.

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