Family
From the award-winning author of NO HUNGER IN PARADISE
Outside the global spotlight, footballers don't drive Aston Martins or pose for underwear ads. This is war. This is life. This is football.
Michael Calvin turned up for the first day of pre-season training at Millwall FC. 333 days later, he sat among the subs at Wembley.
Over the course of a season, he witnessed the intimate everyday life of a football club far from the glitz and glamour of the Premier League, and the unique characters that come together every day on the field.
These are dedicated, hard-working family men, close to their roots, 'playing for the people who hate their jobs, who'd love our lives.'
Forget about the over-hyped circus of the Premier League. This is the beautiful game in all its raucous glory: essential reading for anyone whom football is a way of life.
Michael Calvin is one of the UK’s most accomplished sportswriters, having worked in more than eighty countries. He has covered every major sporting event, including seven summer Olympic Games and six World Cup finals. He was named Sports Writer of the Year for his despatches as a crew member in a round-the-world yacht race and has twice been named Sports Reporter of the Year.
His book, The Nowhere Men, a study of football scouts, won The Times Sports Book of the Year prize in 2014. He became the first author to receive the award in successive years, when Proud, his collaboration with former Wales and British Lions rugby captain Gareth Thomas, was named Sports Book of the Year in 2015.
In the same year Living On The Volcano, which exposed the pressures on managers, was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize. No Nonsense, his collaboration with Joey Barton, was named Autobiography of the Year in the 2017 British Sports Book awards.
No Hunger In Paradise, an insight into youth football that spawned a widely-praised BT Sport documentary, was a Sunday Times bestseller. State of Play, a study of the morality and social impact of modern football, was longlisted for the 2018 William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.
He has been working closely with Thomas Bjorn on Mind Game to capture the unique nature of golf, and the principles and philosophies of the world’s best players.