When Footballers Were Skint: A Journey in Search of the Soul of Football

Description

Long before perma-tanned football agents and TV mega-rights ushered in the age of the multimillionaire player, footballers' wages were capped - even the game's biggest names earned barely more than a plumber or electrician. Footballing legends like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews shared a bond of borderline penury with the huge crowds they entertained on Saturday afternoons, often on pitches that were a world away from the pristine lawns of the game's modern era. Instead of the gleaming, expensive sports cars driven by today's top players, the stars of yesteryear travelled to matches on public transport and, after the game, returned to homes every bit as modest as those of their supporters. Players and fans would even sometimes be next-door neighbours in a street of working class terraced houses. Based on the first-hand accounts of players from a fast-disappearing generation, When Footballers Were Skint relates the fascinating story of a truly great sporting era.

Jon Henderson has written about football as a journalist and author for more than fifty years. He progressed from covering Rushden Town for the Northants Evening Telegraph in the 1960s to filing stories for Reuters on Diego Maradona's antics in winning the World Cup for Argentina in 1986. Since then he has written on football for The Observer and Guardian and his biography of Stanley Matthews was shortlisted for Football Book of the Year in 2013. His other books include a biography of the tennis champion Fred Perry, which was shortlisted for Sports Biography of the Year in 2009 and was a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4.