Nobby Stiles: After the Ball - My Autobiography - Hardcover

Nobby Stiles

3.83

35 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340828870 ISBN 13: 9780340828878

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2003

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'After the Ball' is Nobby Stiles' account of a lifetime spent living and breathing football. Signed to Manchester United at the age of fifteen, he progressed to the England team, and had a starring role in the 1966 World Cup. He is one of only two Englishmen (Bobby Charlton is the other) to win both the World Cup and the European Cup.

After playing at the highest level, Nobby Stiles became a manager, then a youth coach at Old Trafford, where he dealt with the new United of Beckham, Scholes, Giggs and the Neville brothers. His appraisals of these players from this exciting period are revealed, as well as studies of unforgettable teammates such as George Best and Bobby Charlton.

This frank and entertaining autobiography celebrates the remarkable life of one of England's most charismatic of players.

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Review:

The euphoria of a small, balding character is the image people recall most happily of England's 1966 World Cup triumph. But, as After The Ball proves, far from being the genial uncle of our collective memory, Nobby Stiles was just 24 on that historic day at Wembley, a vindictive and vicious onfield hard man at the summit of the game--and only five years away from a bitter slide out of the big time into penury.

Naturally there's plenty of 1966 in Stiles' autobiography After The Ball--much of it charmingly candid about the small humanities behind the legend--and plenty too on Stiles' hugely successful Manchester United career, touched by the tragedy of the Munich air disaster. But the darker side of a life in football--whether it be the love-hate relationships Stiles enjoyed and endured with bosses Matt Busby and Alf Ramsey, or the bloody Anglo-Argentine feuds at club and national level--are unexpected highlights. As is the honest appraisal of how and why life after football went so wrong for Stiles. Skint, and slogging round the country in jobs on the fringes of the game, when he was once football royalty, Stiles is honest enough to express the bitterness, resentment and hopelessness he felt, never more so than when sacked by Alex Ferguson after it had seemed United had rescued its former star from the wilderness. Stiles' collaborator, award-winning sports writer James Lawton, may well have given the recollections some structure and polish, but there is a real sense of immediacy and relish in the telling of even the more familiar tales. No doubt Stiles' late-blooming career on the after-dinner speaking circuit has played the major part in the process of reviewing and refining the story of his life in football, with the result that the personal and the humorous drive the narrative to happy effect, but "After The Ball" is no "great times, great mates" sleepwalk. As a player, so as a man: Stiles has plenty of bite. --Alex Hankin

Review:

The joyful 1966 World Cup-winning pinnacle of Nobby Stiles's fine career only masks the heartache, pain and battles that the little midfield terrier had to endure in a lifetime of knockbacks. Indeed, he could have called this excellent autobiography Against All Odds. (The Sunday Times)

A classic of a burgeoning genre, due in no small part to Lawton's sympathetic marshalling of some wonderfully evocative material. (The Independent)

A captivating tale of a real football man, who had a hard fight to establish himself with Manchester United and in the national team. (The Independent)

A brilliant autobiography. (Daily Mail)

As football books go, this is one of the best I've read. (Daily Mail)

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