The Dynamo Football Bookclub

🚀📉⚽️💷🎙️ In Episode 54, we review Keith Gillespie’s How Not to be a Football Millionaire. A Class of ’92 graduate alongside Becks and co., Gillespie enjoyed a solid career at Newcastle, Blackburn, and a handful of other lower-league clubs. The book charts his rocket-propelled rise 🚀 and his lamentable fall 📉. Capped 86 times for Northern Ireland ⚽️, Gillespie reckons he blew somewhere in the region of £7 million through gambling and slippery financial advisors 💷. I know, its amazing to believe Keith Gillespie earned £7 million... 🎙️📖 Please do give us a nice chunky rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

In our first episode this year, we review our first football novel, David Peace’s The Damned United 📖⚽ Having already reviewed both Clough and Taylor’s autobiographies, this was Alistair’s way of cramming in more Clough 😄 The book has been described as the best novel about football 🏆📚 — a fictionalised account of what happened during the 44-day reign of Clough (and don’t forget Taylor) at Leeds United ⏳⚽ It’s also been made into a film 🎬, which we discuss too. 🚨 Spoiler alert: the 44 days didn’t go well… Happy New Year, folks 🎉 Have a smashing 2026! 🥂✨

Pour yourself a very very large glass of wine 🍷, sit back 🛋️, and enjoy Episode 52 of the Dynamo Football Bookclub. This week, we are taking a lesson in humility from Big Sam Allardyce. 📘 The Premier League’s original innovator turned reactionary, Big Sam elbowed his way up and down England as a player before becoming one of the most noteworthy managers of the Premier League era. His Bolton team really were something back in the day ⚪️⚽ with flair, grit 💪, and no shortage of long punts up the field despite what Sam might say. It was a management career that started with humble Limerick FC 🇮🇪 and hit some memorable high notes 🎶 before ending on the sour notes of England and Leeds 😬. It was a heck of a journey for the Big Man Brute who is not, as it turns out, from the north of England 😂. Join us for Sam’s rose-tinted view of it all. 🌹👓

In Episode 51, we’re back with the Oranje 🇳🇱 as we dive into Basta, the autobiography of the one and only Marco van Basten. The rather oddly nicknamed “Swan of Utrecht” 🦢 rattled in 242 goals and swept up everything in sight: three Eredivisie titles 🏆, four Scudetti 🇮🇹, two European Cups 🏆🏆, and not one, not two, but three Ballons d’Or 🥇🥇🥇 And he did all this before the age of 28. Amazing, football’s Alexander the Great ⚔️ Tune in to discover: Who slammed the door 🚪 in Van Basten’s face for treachery How deep his love ❤️ for Silvio Berlusconi runs What he really thought of Arrigo Sacchi’s revolution 🤯 And what is in the infamous Box 13 📦… If you enjoy the episode, please like, subscribe, and leave us a rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ — it genuinely helps the show grow.

🎉 EPISODE 50! 🎉 We’re celebrating our half-century in style — that’s right, it’s Denis Wise’s autobiography 😏📖⚽️ Wise is one of the three musketeers of English football books. Along with Glenn Hoddle and Steve McMahon, he somehow appears in everyone else’s autobiography — and almost no one ever has anything nice to say about him 😬😂 But rather than just blindly swallowing whatever’s served up by untrustworthy footballers, we decided to go straight to the source. 🎯 Denis’ 2012 autobiography is a suitably short book 🪶 — written while he was still playing, and includes: 📖 The greatest ever FA Cup story 🥜 Vinnie Jones’ penchant for grabbing balls 💥 And all the amazing things we’ve apparently lost to “woke” It’s Episode 50 — a milestone and a madness all in one 🎙️ Please do tune in, like, and subscribe ❤️⚽️

⚽️ “Episode 49: Reboot – The Michael Owen Story” Is Michael Owen football’s oddest ball of all? 🧐 From the helicopter highs of that goal against Argentina 🚁⚽️ to the hamstring horrors that followed (quite a lot of them 😬), Owen’s career was a tale of glory, pain, and lots of grudges. In this week’s episode, we dive into Reboot, Owen’s attempt to set the record straight — revisiting his electric early years, his complicated later life, and his, er… unique way of remembering it all. For reasons we didn’t quite expect, this turned out to be unlike any other football book we’ve read. 🎧 Tune in, have a laugh, and don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe — your support keeps the hamstrings warm. 💪

⚽️ Episode 48: A Season with Verona — Tim Parks and the Tifosi 🇮🇹 After the drama of our last episode, we’re staying in Italy with another unfashionable football club. This time it’s Hellas Verona, a club known as much for its tifosi as for its football 🔵🟡 Back in 2000, British author and horny English teacher Tim Parks embarked on a wild year with the Verona faithful, traveling the length and breadth of Italy as the club battled its way through 34 games to see if they could say in Serie A 🚆🔥 The result, A Season with Verona, is part travelogue, part meditation on fandom, and part fever dream — a portrait of Italy seen through blue-and-yellow smoke 🇮🇹💨 Can Parks match the magic (and madness) of Joe McGinniss’s Miracle of Castel di Sangro? 📖⚡️ Join us for Episode 48 of The Dynamo Football Book Club to find out 🎙️📚