The Dynamo Football Bookclub

🚨 Episode Drop! 🚨   Almost two years in, and on our 46th book, we think we’ve found the best one yet. Hold on to your hats, because Joe McGinniss’s The Miracle of Castel di Sangro is coming your way.   Alistair had never even heard of it (he blames the title). But have you? 🤔   Back in 1996, tiny Castel di Sangro — a town of just 5,000 souls tucked away in Abruzzo — pulled off the impossible. A...

⚽ Injury Time 16 is here! 📺🎙️   In this episode, we choose our greatest television lineups. There may be some personal and national biases at play as we pick the best presenters 🎤, pundits 💬, and commentators 🎧. Thankfully, 🤖 AI is on hand to settle the debate and decide whose lineup comes out on top.   Heated arguments 🔥, nostalgia 🕰️, and a few questionable selections 🤔 ahoy.   🎧 Listen...

🎧 Episode 46 is out now — and it’s the most Alistair-esque episode yet.   That’s right, we’re doing our best to distract poor Al from events at the City Ground by diving into Psycho — the autobiography of his all-time hero, Stuart Pearce. ❤️🌳   The all-tackling, all-scoring, punk-loving left-back spent 12 loyal years at Nottingham Forest, sticking around even after relegation. Fierce, frugal, an...

🎧 Injury Time 15: The Mayor of Barnet Fair – Football’s Worst Haircuts 💈⚽ It’s a question as old as the combover: who had football’s worst-ever haircut? From tragic trims to peroxide crimes, we’ve gathered the very worst in a draft showdown that pits one smorgasbord of shockers against another. There are two routes to hair hell: Trying too hard 💇‍♂️ Not trying at all 🪮 In this episode, we exp...

🎧 Episode 45 is OUT NOW! ⚽🐭   He’s King Kev in England, Mäuserich (Mighty Mouse) in Germany — and everywhere he goes, he’s a two-time Ballon d’Or winner, European Cup champ, and all-round lovely fella. We are talking of course about Kevin Keegan. Sure, he’s a bit hapless at times but in the words of Bill Shankly, Keegan is “everything a man should be.” In this episode, we dive into Kevin Keegan...

Matthew Jarvis 20:16 – “So the last shall be first, and the first last.”    In this episode, we turn things on their head 🙃. We’re picking the worst players to notch up at least 100 Premier League appearances – that’s right, the aim of this draft is to lose. 🫣   Sure, if you’ve played 100 times in the EPL, you’re probably half-decent… but some of these lads were still pretty damn rubbish. 🗑️⚽  ...

📚 Episode 44 is here! This week, we’re diving into The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuściński 🇵🇱 — the legendary Polish reporter, a writer who happened to be a journalist (in his own words) and a man who played fast and loose with the truth, it seems.   ⚔️ The book centres on the 1969 war between Central American neighbours El Salvador 🇸🇻 and Honduras 🇭🇳 — a conflict that lasted just four days, but cl...

How do you follow a 5-time Ballon D’or winner? Well, with an 8-time Ballon D’or Winner of course. That’s right, its Part II of the Guillem Balague GOAT saga and our review of his biography of one Lionel Messi.   Originally published in 2013 but updated for the Argentina World Cup win in 2022, the book is a long one, covering the descent from heaven of the baby Messi to the unassuming city of Rosar...

It’s our 28th episode and we are starting the new year with the first part of the Balague GOAT saga. First up is his award-winning biography of Cristiano Ronaldo.   This player certainly needs no introduction but if you insist then 5 Champions League wins, 5 Ballons D’or, and seven straight calendar years in which he scored more than 50 goals will surely suffice.   We had initially planned to read...

⚽ Injury Time 13: The Steve McMahon Windscreens Shield – a Wrong ’Uns draft ⚽   OUT NOW! 🎧   What makes a wrong ’un? Cheating on your wife? ❌ Not necessarily. Cheating on your wife for eight years… with your sister-in-law? ✅ That probably qualifies.   It’s hard to define, but you know one when you see one.   In Injury Time 13, we each draft our Top 5 Wrong ’Uns to go head-to-head — elbow-to-f...

🎙️ Episode 43 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub is out!   💆‍♂️ Massage parlour, 💅 beauty parlour… Ray Parlour.   That’s right — it’s only Ray Parlour’s autobiography, The Romford Pelé! 📖⚽   Fun fact: Parlour has played in the Premier League for Arsenal more times than any other player 🔴⚪  He’s also a cheeky chappie who stole potted plants 🪴, terrorised poor old Martin Keown, and torpedoed his...

🎧 Episode 12 of Injury Time is here! 🎙️   It’s the Great African Draft Showdown — Johnny’s Danny Invincible 11s take on Alistair’s Orlando Pirates in a five-a-side battle to determine who really knows their African football EPL legends. 🇿🇦⚽🇪🇬🇨🇲   Our hosts pick their best five-a-side teams of African Premier League players and AI tells us who’d win.   With 33 of Africa’s 54 nations represented i...

🎙️ Episode 42 is LIVE! 📘 The Feet of the Chameleon – The Story of African Football by Ian Hawkey ⚽️🌍 An epic journey through the past, present & power of African football.   In this episode of the Dynamo Football Bookclub, we explore the rich, complex and utterly compelling story of football across Africa’s 54 nations 🇿🇲🇪🇬🇸🇳🇨🇲.   🦁 From apartheid-era pitches in South Africa… 🎯 To Cameroon...

Having passed out Crouchie in the podcast charts a couple of weeks ago, we've decided to tackle more giants of the game 🤖   In Injury Time 11 🎙️ we tackle a question that’s baffled football fans for years: who are the greatest players standing at 6′5″ and above? 🏰   ⚽ Have there been any genuinely decent towering strikers beyond the aforementioned Peter Crouch ? 🛡️ Is Per Mertesacker really the...

In Episode 41, we move beyond biographies and autobiographies for the first time and into the wonderful world of the language of football with Do You Speak Football by Tom Williams.  In his book, Williams takes us, Palinesque, on a tour of the world explaining how football is spoken about by fans everywhere. If you would like to find out where a defensive midfielder is known as a faecal plug, what...

🎧 Once more into the football-musical breach… 🎤⚽   We’re back with one final (for now) dive into the weird and wonderful world of footballers who made music. 🎶👟    Footballing genius doesn’t always translate to musical talent (spoiler: some of these are rough) 😬🎵 — but there are surprises. And its all good fun anyway...   💫 The players featured in this episode have won six Ballons d’Or bet...

This week, we dive into Flight to Bogotá by John Leonard — the true story of Neil Franklin, the England defender hailed by Tom Finney as the finest defender of his generation… until he threw it all away.   In the years after WWII, Franklin played 27 times for England and had a ticket to the 1950 World Cup in the bag 🏆. But instead of heading to Brazil, he shocked the football world by signing for...

In this episode of Injury Time, Al and John dive into the chaotic, colourful world of the North American Soccer League (NASL) — the wild 1970s and 80s league that brought Pelé, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, and Best to America.   Each host drafts a 5-a-side dream team of NASL stars. We use this as a vehicle to tell the story - or at least some of the story - of a league where: Clubs wore cowboy kits 🤠 No...

⚽ The Dynamo Football Book Club Podcast — Episode 39: Di Stéfano We kick off our rebrand as The Dynamo Football Book Club with a book about a real legend Di Stéfano by Ian Hawkey.   Alfredo Di Stéfano — the Blonde Arrow 🏹 — won the first five European Cups 🏆 with Real Madrid, played for three national teams 🌍, and lived a life packed with drama: a Venezuelan kidnapping 🕵️, 514 career goals ⚽,...

It is our 8th edition of Injury Time, and we return to the football musical canon. This time round, we are listening to football’s greatest rappers. No Ballon D’or winners this time, but one World Cup winner and lots of hits on YouTube and a lady somehow singing with a Liverpool winger’s voice. It’s not John Barnes; he has been banned.   Please do like and subscribe.

In Episode 38, we discuss the life – or rather The Three Lives – of the Kaiser Franz Beckenbauer by Uli Hesse.   Another of the faces on football’s Mount Rushmore, Beckenbauer is one of only three men to win the World Cup as a player and a manager and he is the only one of those three guys who also won three European Cups on the bounce with his club and who saw Grace Jones naked on a white horse i...

For the 7th edition of Injury Time, we are picking the best and most interesting players who have received drug bans. From party boys like Diego to your boring performance enhancing types like Stam, we take a tour through the players who were caught with their hands in their wife’s medicine cabinet. This is also our first episode to feature an alleged war criminal.   Grab your methylephedrine and...

In Episode 37, we visit the captivating story of Gazza in Italy.    This rather short book by Daniel Storey really packs a punch. Having read so many of these books by now, this one highlights the most important element of all - an interesting protagonist. Gazza is one of the most interesting of all - gifted, haunted and poor entertainment gold.   Have a listen to hear about him slapping an elderl...

In our sixth edition of Injury Time, we take times in a different direction, with something of a Football Top of the Pops.   Do you know which players have had songs in the UK charts? We give you a blast of the Top 5 and this is not according to our own tastes but on the basis of where they charted in the British charts.   Check it out, with songs from a Ballon D’or Winner, two European Cup winner...

In Episode 36, we discuss Gladiator, the autobiography of Francesco Totti. With nicknames such as The Eight King of Rome, Totti had other much better possible names for this book. And yet he went for Gladiator… But what a career the man had, 251 goals in 619 appearances for his hometown team, Roma. He played his first game for the Giallorossi when he was only 17 years old. After becoming captain a...