Author:Patrick Fort,Jean Philippe,Laura Bennett
Get inside the mind of football's most enigmatic icon
‘Zidane is the master’ Pele
One of modern football’s most brilliant players - and one of its most iconic and mysterious figures - Zinedine Zidane’s football career is the stuff of legend. A World Cup-winner with France, he became the world's most expensive player in 2001 when he moved from Juventus to Real Madrid for £46million, where his exceptional talent earned him a reputation as one of the greatest players of all-time. His playing career concluded explosively when he retired after being sent off for head-butting Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final.
But his football career was far from over. After a spell coaching in Spain, he was appointed manager of Real Madrid in 2015 and immediately demonstrated that his skill as a manager matched his talent on the pitch, leading the team to successive Champions League victories and establishing him as one of the new managerial greats.
Rarely speaking to the press, Zidane is known as a man who ‘speaks only with the ball’. In this definitive biography, Patrick Fort and Jean Philippe take us behind the scenes of his exceptional career, revealing the man behind the legend.
A book that becomes more and more interesting as the pages turn.
—— L'EquipeThe portrait of a sensitive and generous man.
—— Tele MagazineI’m a huge fan . . . North is tremendous.
—— Vassos Alexander, BBC Radio 2Probably America’s greatest ever ultrarunner.
—— GuardianOne of the greatest runners of all time.
—— Runner's WorldThe greatest ultrarunner of them all.
—— New York TimesAn ultramarathon legend.
—— Men’s HealthOne of the world’s most dominant ultramarathon runners.
—— Daily TelegraphAn ultramarathon running god . . . Is he crazy? Or is he superhuman?
—— Slate[Jurek has] accomplished feats that boggle the mind, showing the amazing things that can be accomplished by a determined athlete.
—— Business InsiderWidely regarded as one of the best ultrarunners of all-time.
—— Men’s JournalScott Jurek is a veritable demigod in the sport of ultrarunning.
—— IndependentAn ultramarathon legend . . . An extraordinary athlete.
—— GizmodoScott Jurek is Exhibit A in the argument that man was meant to run.
—— ComplexUndoubtedly the greatest ultrarunner of his generation.
—— IndependentJurek’s victories in punishing 100-mile races since the late 1990s – plus a starring role in the writer Christopher McDougall’s best seller, Born to Run – have made him a distance-running celebrity. But tackling the Appalachian Trail forced him to dig deeper than he ever had before . . . To hear Jurek tell it, forcing himself to the limit is purifying and transformational.
—— The AtlanticUltrarunning legend Scott Jurek has a great tale of conquering the Appalachian Trail . . . If testing yourself to the max is your thing, you’ll love this story.
—— Trail Running MagazineHeartbreaking . . . an excellent piece of reportage
—— i-PaperThe award-winning writer’s new forensic, and sometimes alarming, case study into why some young prospects make the cut – and others fall away – is fascinating…
The FA would do well to read this if they want success
Brilliantly sourced and written… As a portrait of the state of the modern game, No Hunger In Paradise is vital reading. With Calvin’s previous studies, it serves as a record of what football is like today and should place him alongside Arthur Hopcraft, John Moynihan and Hunter Davies in providing the sport with its defining literature
—— When Saturday ComesOne of the great, and most important, sports books of 2017. Passionate, incisive, gripping.
—— Don McCraeCalvin is a natural storyteller who is unflinching as he goes behind the scenes and meets the people at the heart of the youth development network.
—— Irish IndependentThe book is an eye-opener into the pressures put on young players by clubs, coaches and parents; the corruption and conceit, bullying and harassment. Plus the lengths those clubs and their scouts go to, to recruit kids who have yet to reach secondary school.
—— Independent, 10 Best Football Books of the Year 2017Completes his formidable trilogy on the game with a blistering indictment of how it treats its youngest players
—— Guardian’s sport books of the yearOutstanding
—— TimesAnn Wroe’s Six Facets of Light is a fascinating and original meditation [on light]. Six Facets of Light is an exquisite collage of relations, a prose poem to “what escaped” absolutely everyone – and to how madly, brilliantly, they tried to “be in step”.
—— Joanna Kavenna , Times Literary Supplement