Three Lions On The Shirt

Book excerpt: The first critical biography of the English national football team. From Stanley Matthews to Bobby Moore to Michael Owen, all the icons of the English game have worn the famous white shirt. It is those players and their achievements that make the shirt special and still make England the nation the rest of the world wants to beat. Three Lions on the Shirt is a history of the England team throughout the last century. From back in the days when players received a match fee of 10/- for an international, and were selected from the likes of Wednesday Strollers, Clapham Rovers and Darwen, through the post-war humiliation at the hands of the USA and Hungary to England's finest moment in 1966; from the disappointment of the seventies and the eighties to the relative renaissance of the nineties, Dave Bowler chronicles the vicissitudes of a team lambasted and worshipped in equal measure. Three Lions on the Shirt is the first critical biography of the national team: it features original interviews with over fifty plays and managers, past and present, including Tom Finney, Geoff Hurst, Gary Lineker, Rodney Marsh, Cyrille Regis, Les Ferdinand, the Neville brothers and Paul Merson.