Manyebook

Nobby Stiles

The euphoria of a small, balding character is the image people recall most happily of England's 1966 World Cup triumph. But, as After The Ball proves, far from being the genial uncle of our collective memory, Nobby Stiles was just 24 on that historic day at Wembley, a vindictive and vicious onfield hard man at the summit of the game — and only five years away from a bitter slide out of the big time into penury.

Naturally there's plenty of 1966 in Stiles' autobiography After The Ball — much of it charmingly candid about the small humanities behind the legend — and plenty too on Stiles' hugely successful Manchester United career, touched by the tragedy of the Munich air disaster. But the darker side of a life in football — whether it be the love-hate relationships Stiles enjoyed and endured with bosses Matt Busby and Alf Ramsey, or the bloody Anglo-Argentine feuds at club and national level — are unexpected highlights. As is the honest appraisal of how and why life after football went so wrong for Stiles. Skint, and slogging round the country in jobs on the fringes of the game, when he was once football royalty, Stiles is honest enough to express the bitterness, resentment and hopelessness he felt, never more so than when sacked by Alex Ferguson after it had seemed United had rescued its former star from the wilderness. Stiles' collaborator, award-winning sports writer James Lawton, may well have given the recollections some structure and polish, but there is a real sense of immediacy and relish in the telling of even the more familiar tales. No doubt Stiles' late-blooming career on the after-dinner speaking circuit has played the major part in the process of reviewing and refining the story of his life in football, with the result that the personal and the humorous drive the narrative to happy effect, but "After The Ball" is no "great times, great mates" sleepwalk. As a player, so as a man: Stiles has plenty of bite. — Alex Hankin

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 307
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780340828878
  • Genres
  • football, biography
  • Release date
  • 2003