It’s Episode 18 and its Johan Cruyff’s My Turn for the Ademola Bookmen Podcast. Join us as we take a trip through the life of arguably the best influential person in the history of football.

Cruyff won the European Cup three times with Ajax, the team whose stadium he grew up across the road from. He also invented the modern game of football with the Total Football of the Netherlands in 1974 and went on to build the footballing cathedral of Barcelona, to borrow a line from his protégé and heir, Pep Guardiola.

A true great both on the pitch – the greatest European of the 20th century to some – as well as off the pitch, with a coaching philosophy that has gone on to conquer world football. But is the book any good? Tune in to find out.

It’s Episode 17 and we are reading Boyeln Boy by Mr. West Ham himself, Mark Noble. Having been released in November 2022, this is by far the most recent book we have reviewed. Noble famously played for only one club (if you don’t count the time he spent at Arsenal, Hull, and Ipswich) but this book is perhaps most memorable for the revelation that he’s really a Man United fan.

Putting that juicy morsel to one side for a moment, Noble played a million times for West Ham and never for England (or indeed for Ireland). Have a listen and see how Al and Johnny got on with Noble’s 18 year career at his home town club.

Episode 16 focuses on the life and times of that most overlooked of the Class of 92, Robbie Savage.

Less famous for his time as an underweight and underscoring striker in the Man United Youth Team than he is for his displays as an all tackling, all bullshiting midfielder for Leicester, Birmingham and Blackburn and others, Robbie is by his own admission something of a marmite character.

Throughout his 2011 book Savage! (complete with exclamation mark in the title) Robbie says that people should meet him before they judge him. If you are not particularly interested in meeting him but would like to judge him, join us for our latest episode and listen to us discuss the travails of 90s and 00s most recognizable Premier League ponytail.

With a career in English football going all the way back to 1967, Neil Warnock has traveled to every corner of the country. In his 2013 book, The Gaffer – The Trials and Tribulations of a Football Manager, Warnock outlines his view of the football world. It’s an old fashion view, in many respects, but a romantic one too.

Less an autobiography than an insight into the day-to-day running of a Championship/Premier League team, the book covers Warnock’s likes (wingers, Scott Parker, his son William, the British Monarchy) and dislikes (Shaun Wright Philips, Graham Poll, the design of the Premier League trophy).

Tune in to find out more about what it is that makes football’s most dislikeable looking man tick and find out what Al and Johnny made of Warnock's offering to the literary canon.

James Milner's first appearance in the Premier League was as a substitute for Manchester United's new technical director, Jason Wilcox. He is that bloody old. 634 Premier League appearances later, he may soon takeover Gareth Barry as the player with the most appearances of all.

In 2019, he wrote Ask a Footballer, which is not so much an autobiography as it is a collection of thoughts - musings even - on the life of a Premier League footballer.

Ultimately, the thing that most people interested in this book want to know is, is James Milner as boring as they say. Tune in for Episode 14 to find out.

In Episode 13 we read about the life and times of the chicken licking, Marseilles fan kicking, Patrice Evra.

Born in Senegal, one of 24 children (not a typo), and raised in the meanest streets of Paris, Evra won five Premier Leagues with Manchester United and two Scudettos with Juventus. He also has the less enviable accolade of being the player who has lost the most ever Champions League finals taking (but not taking home) four losers medals to go with the one winners medal he got for beating Chelsea on that famous night in Moscow in 2008.

Published in 2008, ghost written by Andy Mitten (from Britain), the book is called I Love This Game. Is it an edge of the box belter against Bayern of a book or more like the botched circumcision that the young Patrice once endured. Listen to find out.

Oh, and please like and subscribe.

Arsene Who?

In Episode 12, we review our first book by a manager. He may have been a stranger when he arrived in England in 1996 but he is no stranger now. In his 22 years with Arsenal, Wenger went from nobody to managerial royalty, with a turn towards the end as the most hated man in North London, or at least so it seemed at the time.

Is this the sex-filled page turner that Al has been calling for since we launched the good ship Bookmen? Tune in to find out.

Thanks to my friend Samyak for the recommendation.

Who better to follow Diego Maradona than the Aldershot Hotshot Steve Claridge?

Probably most famous for scoring the goal that got Leicester up to the Premier League in 1996, football's fruit and veg man played for 24 (by our count) clubs in a career that spanned four decades. Throughout that period, he traveled around in battered cars as he commuted from his parents house in Portsmouth to clubs all over the south and southeast, earning himself a reputation for tardiness and for having the filthiest boots in football.

Written in 1997, Tales from the Boot Camps is the first of Claridge's books and covers the years right up to that promotion winning belter at Wembley in 1996.