Higginbotham doesn’t try to be too controversial within his book and doesn’t name names when he recounts his stories, it’s just simply an honest account of the modern-day footballer.

Yet nobody had tackled the ultimate football country since the American sociologist Janet Lever wrote the obscure but wonderful Soccer Madness in 1983. You might be surprised to see Provided You Don’t Kiss Me declared FFT’s greatest ever football book. A Leicester City legend, Muzzy Izzet’s autobiography charts his rise from YTS player at a pre-Roman Abramovich Chelsea to Premier League player with Leicester City to World Cup semi-finalist with the Turkish national side.Written in more of a conversational style rather than a classic literacy style, Alex Ferguson’s book will not entertain you but also educate you.

And the startling chapter on East German football says more in a few pages about totalitarian football than most books on the subject. One of the most recognisable faces in British football, and the ex England manager, Sam Allardyce’s autobiography is blunt, to the point and pulls no punches. The book is also quite humourous in parts especially when he talks about his career in non-league football – a world away from the money and adulation he receives in the Premier League. Just as The Damned United (listed below) is a book that examines, through a stream-of-consciousness narrative, the obsessions of a man being played out in an often-illogical, unforgiving, alpha male-dominated environment. After a brief diversion into half-a-dozen “issues”– Hillsborough, hooliganism, Cantona’s kung-fu – the book settles into its second half, dispatches from World Cups 1966 through 1994.This first title in the Jamie Johnson series is an immersive and engaging read that will appeal to even the most reluctant of readers!