A Man Walks On To a Pitch: Stories from a Life in Football

Harry's tales and insight into the game he's lived and breathed for 50 years—an immensely entertaining history of British football

"When a man walks on to a pitch there’s always a chance something magic can happen, that’s what keeps us coming back . . . "

Harry Redknapp shares a lifetime’s experience of obsessing over soccer, 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 and now 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 with, coached, argued with, 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 room,s 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.

Harry Redknapp started out as a trainee at Tottenham, then 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 currently QPR. He won the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008 and took Spurs into the Champions League in 2010. He is also the author of Always Managing.