The Dynamo Football Bookclub

It's the 1980s, Maradona's decade. Who will win the crucial toss in the latest draft between Alistair and Johnny? Those two straight up don't like each other...   The 80s saw Italy win won, Argentina win the other, both of them beating West Germany in the finals of 82 and 86 respectively. Names are starting to get a lot more familiar and hell, we even remember some of these guys.    It's 2-2 in th...

In continuation of our World Cup series 🌍🏆, we find ourselves in the 1980s 🕺 with the greatest team never to win the World Cup. At least, that is the contention of Stuart Horsfield 📚, the author of The Glorious Failure, a book about the Brazil 1982 team 🇧🇷 that was (spoiler alert 🚨) beaten by Italy 🇮🇹 and, specifically, Paolo Rossi in a weird round robin second round of that competition.   Tu...

It’s Injury Time 28 ⚽️ and we are immersing ourselves in the 1970s 🕺 with a draft of players from the World Cups of that decade 🌍🏆   Throughout the lifetime of the Dynamo Football Bookclub 📚, Alistair has tried to fit around 12 players on the football Mount Rushmore 🗿. But if there really were only to be four on such a landmark, there is a very real chance that three of them would have playe...

In Episode 58, we continue our World Cup series 🌍🏆 with The Greatest Show on Earth - The Inside Story of the Legendary 1970 World Cup by Andrew Downie. The book is a recap of the most iconic World Cup of all — the Mexico 1970 tournament 🇲🇽⚽️   Downie’s 2021 book is a kind of oral history 📖, with the players involved describing each match of that World Cup in their own words, with Downie only j...

In Injury Time 27, we continue our draft journey through the World Cups, focusing this time on the tournaments in Chile in ’62 🇨🇱 and England in ’66 🏴.   Al has been comprehensively battered in both our previous World Cup drafts, but he is on home turf here having lived in both countries. With his pride and reputation at stake, can he dig as deep as his heroes of ’66 ⚽ and claim his first victor...

In Episode 57, we take on a seemingly impossible task — getting to know the unknowable ⚽🔍. Bobby Moore was England’s World Cup captain in 1966 🏆. He is a colossus of English football, the first name on the all-time England XI and no doubt captain too.   But so great is the Moore legend that Moore the man is something of a mystery 🤔. But as we learn in Matt Dickinson’s biography Bobby Moore: Th...

In Injury Time 26 🎙️⚽, we are doing our 1950s World Cups draft 🏆🔥   With the Nasazzi’s baton 🏏 securely in Johnny’s clutches after the first of our World Cup draft series, can Alistair muster the forces of the ’50s to wrest it from him? 💪⚡   Join us as we learn about some of the quirkier elements of international football in the 1950s (qualification by coin toss you say? 🪙😅) and chat about...

In Episode 56 🎙️⚽ we talk about The King of Football 👑, Edson Arantes Do Nascimento. That’s Dico to his friends and family 👨‍👩‍👦, and Pelé to the rest of us 🇧🇷✨   Tune in for some important pronunciation advice 🔊🗣️. Your friends may all be laughing at you behind your back 😂for how you pronounce this man’s name… Find out why Al thinks Cristiano Ronaldo is football’s real King 🐐 and learn a...

⚽️ With the World Cup bearing down on us like a busy full back 💨, we are getting into the groove of things 🎧.   🏆 In Injury Time 25, we begin our own countdown to the summer’s festival of football with our first World Cup draft. In this episode, we are selecting the best players from the three World Cups that took place in the 1930s 📜. Lots of familiar names in there like… em… that one guy 🤔...

🗽⚽️🔥 In Episode 55, join us for the story of the New York Cosmos, as told by Gavin Newsham in his book Once In a Lifetime 📖🎙️   The Cosmopolitans, to give them their full name, burned fast and bright ✨🔥 from 1971 to 1985, lighting up the North American Soccer League ⚽️🌍. They were — to borrow a line from the book — the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the NASL 📈📉.   They had P...

In Injury Time 24, we take Sean Dyche’s advice and play the lookalikey game 👀⚽️ — the game he once said makes the world go round. It may not be that integral to the earth’s orbit, but it sure is fun   Thanks Sean Dyche / Mick Hucknall / Chris Evans 🙏 Please do listen and like (in that order 😉) Available wherever you get your pods 🎧

🚀📉⚽️💷🎙️ In Episode 54, we review Keith Gillespie’s How Not to be a Football Millionaire.   A Class of ’92 graduate alongside Becks and co., Gillespie enjoyed a solid career at Newcastle, Blackburn, and a handful of other lower-league clubs. The book charts his rocket-propelled rise 🚀 and his lamentable fall 📉.   Capped 86 times for Northern Ireland ⚽️, Gillespie reckons he blew somewhere in...

In our increasingly polarized world, what a tonic it is to think about where the footballers we so admire fall on the political spectrum. We can even go one further and consider who wins when the footballer conservatives take on the game's SJWs?  Tune in to Injury Time 23 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub and find out which ideology was best all along. Or at least best at football... Available where...

In our first episode this year, we review our first football novel, David Peace’s The Damned United 📖⚽   Having already reviewed both Clough and Taylor’s autobiographies, this was Alistair’s way of cramming in more Clough 😄   The book has been described as the best novel about football 🏆📚 — a fictionalised account of what happened during the 44-day reign of Clough (and don’t forget Taylor) at...

To mark the festive season 🎄, we discuss some of the weightier religious and historical topics 📜✝️ such as the cause of Herod’s death ☠️ and the schism between the Catholic and Protestant churches ⛪️⚔️⛪️. Yes indeed, it’s a Christmas 5-a-side ⚽️🎅.   Join us as we find ever more tenuous and tangential ways 🧵🤔 to connect top footballers to the 25 December 🎁🎂 and find out if Al can get a ni...

Pour yourself a very very large glass of wine 🍷, sit back 🛋️, and enjoy Episode 52 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub.   This week, we are taking a lesson in humility from Big Sam Allardyce. 📘   The Premier League’s original innovator turned reactionary, Big Sam elbowed his way up and down England as a player before becoming one of the most noteworthy managers of the Premier League era. His Bolton...

We are skin deep in Episode 21 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub’s Injury Time looking at footballers’ tattoos. 🏉🖋️   From numerology with Sergio Ramos 🔢 to Richarlison’s tattoo tribute to team mate and all-around good guy Neymar 🇧🇷✨, there is quite a lot to talk about.   Will Johnny take up Al’s offer of a five-figure sum to get a tattoo of Al’s face? 🤔💰😬 And more importantly, can Al finally...

In Episode 51, we’re back with the Oranje 🇳🇱 as we dive into Basta, the autobiography of the one and only Marco van Basten.   The rather oddly nicknamed “Swan of Utrecht” 🦢 rattled in 242 goals and swept up everything in sight: three Eredivisie titles 🏆, four Scudetti 🇮🇹, two European Cups 🏆🏆, and not one, not two, but three Ballons d’Or 🥇🥇🥇   And he did all this before the age of 28. Amazi...

It’s injury time on Injury Time ⏱️⚽️   In Episode 20, we pay homage to all those fine fellows whose careers were brought to a premature end due to injury 🤕💔   From the most famous (David Busst) 😬 to some of the more obscure and unlikely — including the goalkeeper who ended his career up a tree while rescuing a cat 🧤🐈🌳   There is also the harrowing tale of the end of a Sprite-drenched Alista...

🎉 EPISODE 50! 🎉 We’re celebrating our half-century in style — that’s right, it’s Denis Wise’s autobiography 😏📖⚽️   Wise is one of the three musketeers of English football books. Along with Glenn Hoddle and Steve McMahon, he somehow appears in everyone else’s autobiography — and almost no one ever has anything nice to say about him 😬😂   But rather than just blindly swallowing whatever’s serv...

🎶 “It’s not time to make a change…” 🎶 It's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy our Father & Son 5-a-side Draft!   Welcome to Injury Time 19 — the Scott Gemini Nepo Baby Special 👨‍👦⚽️😂   This week, we’re drafting the sons of footballing legends to face off on the pitch. It's rich pickings indeed 🤌💎 Turns out a lot of footballers are, well… footballers’ kids. Who knew?! 😏   Tune in for:...

  ⚽️ “Episode 49: Reboot – The Michael Owen Story”   Is Michael Owen football’s oddest ball of all? 🧐   From the helicopter highs of that goal against Argentina 🚁⚽️ to the hamstring horrors that followed (quite a lot of them 😬), Owen’s career was a tale of glory, pain, and lots of grudges.   In this week’s episode, we dive into Reboot, Owen’s attempt to set the record straight — revisiting hi...

☁️ The clouds have lifted over Old Trafford since the weekend with United’s smash-and-grab win down at Anfield — but has the storm truly passed? ⚡️   United’s failures on the pitch in recent years have only been compounded by the uncanny ability of their former flops to reach new heights away from the stifling drag around the Theatre of Dreams 🏟️.   In this episode of Injury Time, we see if Unite...

⚽️ Episode 48: A Season with Verona — Tim Parks and the Tifosi 🇮🇹   After the drama of our last episode, we’re staying in Italy with another unfashionable football club. This time it’s Hellas Verona, a club known as much for its tifosi as for its football 🔵🟡   Back in 2000, British author and horny English teacher Tim Parks embarked on a wild year with the Verona faithful, traveling the length...

🎙️ Episode Drop: Injury Time 17 – The Pig’s Head Derby: The Real Snake Draft It’s 23 November 2002. Luis Figo trots over to take a corner for Real Madrid against Barcelona. Moments later, a severed pig’s head sails onto the pitch — lobbed by a fan of the club that claims to be “more than a football team.”   Once adored, now despised, Figo had become public enemy number one for the Blaugrana, and t...