Whose Game Is It Anyway?

Football, Life, Love & Loss

Michael Calvin

• Publisher: Pitch Publishing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781785319259
• Year: 2021

Football has never seemed so distant from its fans. Many have been alienated by the greed and shameless self-interest of the Premier League, and no one can predict how the global game will look post-pandemic. In Whose Game Is It Anyway?, Sunday Times best-selling author Michael Calvin searches for a reason to believe. Written at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, the book is a thought-provoking, deeply personal account of the role sport – and particularly football – plays in everyday life. Part memoir, part manifesto, it takes the reader on a tour of the world's greatest sporting occasions and into its outposts in sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazon Basin and the Southern Ocean. Drawn from Calvin's experience as an award-winning sportswriter, covering every major sports event over 40 years in more than 80 countries, it offers first-hand insight into such icons as Muhammad Ali, Maradona and Sir Bobby Charlton. With settings ranging from a jungle clearing to a township in apartheid South Africa, this is sport as you've never seen it before.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• 1. Father and Son
• 2. Fantasy Football
• 3. From Playground to Pithead
• 4. The Match
• 5. Stairway to Heaven
• 6. The Man on the Wire
• 7. Nights in Pink Satin
• 8. Playing with the Pros
• 9. Behind the Curtain
• 10. Milestones
• 11. House of Cards
• 12. Sing Your Own Song
• 13. Fragile
• 14. In the Arena
• 15. Lost at Sea
• 16. The Art of the Impossible
• 17. Funeral for a Friend
• 18. Who Cares for the Carers?
• 19. Soul Food
• 20. Rebirth
• 21. The Curse of the Quid
• 22. Everyday Heroes
• 23. Shades of Grey
• 24. Truth to Power
• 25. Whose Game is it Anyway?
• Acknowledgements
• Photos