The Accidental Footballer by Pat Nevin
I’ll fill in a few details about Nevin, although those of you who don’t know about his football career probably haven’t got beyond the title of the book being reviewed here. Nevin was a small, skilful winger who was one of the most entertaining players of the 1980s and 1990s. His best days were with Chelsea before he moved to Everton when they were one of the biggest teams in the country. His spell there was less successful or satisfying for him for many reasons including a series of injuries. The book ends as he decides to move from Everton and take a step down to Tranmere Rovers because he is convinced he will simply enjoy playing for a team with a manager and community spirit more sympathetic to his vision of how football should be played.
If any non-football enthusiasts are still with me, I need to quickly add that it was not his football skill alone that made him a curious but fascinating sportsman in the days when the game was not such big business and the subject of 24 hour media scrutiny as it is today. Nevin was the most untypical of footballers especially at a time when it was the preserve of traditional working class young men on the pitch and self-made local businessmen in the boardroom. Although from a Glasweigan working class family with strong Catholic and socialist beliefs, he had been brought up to value education and aspire to a purposeful life. He read avidly, loved all forms of art and culture but especially the alternative bands of that time such as New Order and Joy Division, and indeed looked like an indie pop star. He held progressive views on race, gender and sexuality.
When I watched him in the 1980s he didn’t fit the typical footballer mould and, therefore, the accidental adjective is self-explanatory. Except that it is not just his intellectual and temperamental differences that justify the book’s title; it’s the fact that in the first few years of his professional career he was always actively considering whether to stop playing professionally so that he could go to university. He did not see himself as a footballer but as someone who played football because he loved the game and he did not expect to be defined by it. Yet when he finished his career he became a senior official for the footballers’ trade union, the PFA, and is a regular football broadcaster and journalist writing numerous article for national newspapers. Without reading this book, I would never have defined him as just a footballer. However, having done so, it is hard not to admire his hinterland; and yet I suspect he would himself be more comfortable nowadays about his role and contribution to the sport – so, not a footballer, but a man of football…amongst many other things.
Perhaps that explains why he only decided to write this book in the last few years. One of his explanations for this was his frustration at being asked by his employers to engage more with online discussions about the game and, rather than outline his own views of the game, he was encouraged to reflect back in his writing the trending discussions in order to create clickbait. As quickly emerges when he writes about his background, this sort of approach is anathema to Nevin. His views are well-considered and rooted in the values of his admirable family – there’s no way he is not going to give balanced, honest opinions that he is happy to stand by. It seems, therefore, that this generous and warm account of his footballing career was a riposte to the easy soundbites and confected conflict prevalent in the new media landscape.
Of course, for someone like me, who is the same sort of age as Nevin, and with an enthusiasm for sport, then this is a fascinating book because of its behind the scenes exploration of the famous clubs that I watched in my twenties and thirties. I won’t detain you here with examples of his recollection of famous matches and the characters in the game at the time – Kenny Dalgleish, Kevin Keegan, Jock Stein, Brian Clough and many, many more. Just to say, there is enough traditional insights into the dressing room and training ground to keep a sports fan entertained. The added bonus is that he brings a thoughtfulness and empathy to these insights.
In fact, that is the USP of this book: Nevin brings a perceptive and individual take on his experiences. To understand why he was able to succeed in the tough world of professional football whilst retaining the values that saw him perceived a weirdo by the football fraternity – a respected and well-liked weirdo but a weirdo nevertheless – he spends valuable time describing his upbringing and the values that were embedded within him. As a youth, he was encouraged by his family to develop an open and hard-working approach to his school studies and recreations. He expected to eventually become a teacher or some similar professional job that he saw as valuable for the health of society. He knew he had talent as a footballer and his father worked tirelessly with him honing his skills. Here’s the refreshing aspect, though: his family never put any pressure on him or drove him to live out their hopes and dreams. His father, in particular, just wanted his son to enjoy the game by being the best he could be. It is clear that he carried this attitude with him throughout his career and his career choices were driven not by cash and fame but by the values, the people and the playing philosophy of the sides he joined. It wasn’t only the lure of university and a different sort of career that made him continually question if he had got what he wanted from the game and should move to a new challenge. He actively thought about packing it in when confronted the racist behaviour to his black team mate, Paul Canoville and other prominent stars such as John Barnes.
This makes Nevis seem a rather earnest, perhaps self-righteous young man. And he is happy to own up to those traits but, as a player,he was also open to the fun aspects of being part of a group of energetic young men. What is telling, however, is that despite his differences from the footballers around him he was popular and clearly has strong friendships from his playing days. His colleagues did not judge him because he was never patronising towards them. They just raised their eyes knowingly when he took himself off to the ballet or was reading a Penguin Classic on the way to the game. He is wonderfully generous to all the people he encountered during his playing days and even finds redeeming characteristics in people such as Howard Kendall, who made his time at Everton miserable partly because this was when the late manager was heavily into his fatal drinking phase.
I came away from this book with a much more positive view of the game because of the way Nevin presents the footballing world. In addition to all these treats for a fan of sports books there is also the descriptions of his encounters with John Peel who became a close friend, as well as his impressions of the music and cultural scene in London and further north in the last two decades of the century.
Oh, and as I mentioned to my two good friends, Dave and David recently, he also gives you his account of a Scottish international team’s last football tournament triumph and his part in it. And that’s an appropriate sport's nerd quiz question on which to end.