
A Man Walks On To a Pitch
Stories from a Life in Football
Harry Redknapp(Author)
Ebury Press
Published on 4. June 2015
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-0-09-195553-3 (ISBN)
Description
'When a man walks on to a pitch there's always a chance something magic can happen, that's what keeps us coming back...'
In A Man Walks On To a Pitch, Harry shares a lifetime's experience of obsessing over football, during which he has seen it all first hand - the good, the bad and the unbelievable. Harry started in an age where players were ordinary blokes who might live on the same street as you and earn a similar wage. Now he manages in an era of player power, multi-million pound wages and teams assembled from around the globe.
As he shares stories of some of the legends and journeymen he played, coached, argued and drank with, Harry picks a team for each decade from the 1950s to the present. He gets to the heart of what was right and wrong with each era and explores the changes in the game from lifestyle to tactics. He weaves his choices together with unforgettable tales from the training pitches, boot rooms and card schools.
There are tales of the untutored genius of Duncan Edwards and Tom Finney, legendary tough Scots like Bobby Collins, Dave Mackay and Billy Bremner, the world-beaters of 1966, unpredictable one-off wizards from Sir Stanley Matthews to Matt Le Tissier, natural-born goalscorers from Greaves to Dalglish and the greatest foreign players to grace our game from Trautmann to Bergkamp. It is one of the best informal histories of the British game you'll ever read.
In A Man Walks On To a Pitch, Harry shares a lifetime's experience of obsessing over football, during which he has seen it all first hand - the good, the bad and the unbelievable. Harry started in an age where players were ordinary blokes who might live on the same street as you and earn a similar wage. Now he manages in an era of player power, multi-million pound wages and teams assembled from around the globe.
As he shares stories of some of the legends and journeymen he played, coached, argued and drank with, Harry picks a team for each decade from the 1950s to the present. He gets to the heart of what was right and wrong with each era and explores the changes in the game from lifestyle to tactics. He weaves his choices together with unforgettable tales from the training pitches, boot rooms and card schools.
There are tales of the untutored genius of Duncan Edwards and Tom Finney, legendary tough Scots like Bobby Collins, Dave Mackay and Billy Bremner, the world-beaters of 1966, unpredictable one-off wizards from Sir Stanley Matthews to Matt Le Tissier, natural-born goalscorers from Greaves to Dalglish and the greatest foreign players to grace our game from Trautmann to Bergkamp. It is one of the best informal histories of the British game you'll ever read.
Reviews / Votes
The book all football fans will want to read * Daily Mail * Informative, entertaining and full of insights * The Sunday Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Ebury Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
267 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-09-195553-3 (9780091955533)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2014
1st Edition
Ebury Digital
€11.99
Available for download
Person
Harry Redknapp was born in 1947 in Poplar, East London. After starting out as a trainee at Tottenham, he signed for West Ham and played for them between 1965 and 1972. He also played for Bournemouth and the Seattle Sounders before injury took him into management and coaching. He has managed at Bournemouth, West Ham, Portsmouth (twice), Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and QPR. He won the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008 and took Spurs into the Champions League in 2010. He has written two bestselling books - his autobiography Always Managing, which was number one in the Sunday Times - and his history of the game in A Man Walks On To a Pitch. He is married to Sandra and has two sons, Mark and Jamie (who played for Liverpool, Tottenham and England). He is also uncle to Frank Lampard. He has two bulldogs called Rosie and Buster.