Paul Grech: Writer

Courtesy of West Yorkshire Sports (www.wysp.co.uk)

Ben u Bill Perry bil-flokkijiet tal-Blackpool

“I’m going to be rich!” was the typically honest reply of Antonio Cassano when asked what went through his mind after scoring a fantastic goal against Inter as a 17 year old, upon making his first start for Bari in 1999. As crass as such a comment might seem, it was, perhaps, only natural for Cassano to react that way, having been raised in one of Italy’s most impoverished and tough neighbourhoods. As things turned out, though, it was quite a prescient thought. Cassano may have never fulfilled his early promise or achieved as much as he might over the last eleven years, but this player has certainly done pretty well financially for himself.

A few day before my daughter was born, the publisher of Jonathan Wilson's first book Behind the Curtain sent me a review copy.  Rarely has a delivery been so timely as over the next week or so it was to prove to be an excellent way to fill the monotony of those late hours spent rocking cradles and trying to get a crying baby to sleep.

Thanks to that book, Wilson became a personal favourite. I tried to read everything he wrote with each piece increasing my conviction of his brilliance.   His ability to write about with passion and verve about Eastern European football (initially) and tactics (subsequently) were insightful and inspirational in equal measures.

Indeed there are, arguably, few writers who have been as influential as him.  Inverting the Pyramid kickstarted the current trend of tactical analysis whilst Blizzard, the magazine he launched earlier this year, has proven that there can be exceptional writing about football.

Yet, mention this to Wilson and he is dismissive saying that he just "rode a wave that was coming his way". Inadvertedly, however he has put it better than anyone else could because spotting those waves and being the first to get to them is precisely what visionaries are capable of doing.

When did you decide that writing is what you wanted to do for a living?  And what sort of training did you have?
I’d always written stuff, from being five or six. I worked on the Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme from being about 16, and then I started doing freelance work for Match of the Day magazine (the old version) while I was doing my Master’s degree. I possibly would have been an academic had I got funding to do a DPhil – on the subject of imperial constructions of masculinity in Conrad and Kipling – but to be honest I’m much happier as a football-writer than I’d ever have been as an academic. I did a journalism course, but to be honest I learned more doing a week of work experience than I did in three months on the course.

Looking back – and taking on board what I learned while teaching a journalism course  - I think the fact I read huge amounts was a big help. I spent six months teaching in a Tibetan monastery in India between school and university, and while there I got in the habit of reading 50 pages before I got up in the morning and 50 pages before I went to sleep, something I pretty much carried on until I started working full-time as a journalist. Even now I read a lot on buses, trains, planes etc. It baffled me while teaching how little reading people who wanted to write for a living did.

You started out at onefootball.com, a site that if I recall had ambitious plans but not a sound business case.  Yet I believe that's where you got the bug about Eastern European football.  What was that experience like?
I’m not sure that’s quite true about the business plan. I think mistakes were made early on – as a lot of people made mistakes in the first flush of the dot-com bubble – but by 2002 we were pretty close to breaking even when the parent company loaded a huge debt on us from another part of the business. That was unsustainable, and that’s why we disappeared.

It was a fantastic place to work as a first job. A lot of freedom, a hugely dedicated, innovative staff, and a great chance to learn about football all over the world. No money, but you don’t care about that when you’re mid-20s.

Why the fascination with Eastern European football?
The first place I went to outside of the UK was Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia, in 1984. I went back with my mam and dad five times before the war, and that gave me an interest in eastern Europe (albeit in its friendly, Titoist form). Then when I was in lower sixth we had an exchange with a school from Tambov in Russia, which strengthened that fascination. So there was a spark there, but what ignited it was that at onefootball I was very junior and so while others looked after the more major football countries I tended to take the eastern stories. I started going out there, meeting people, making friends and contacts, and when onefootball went under, I realised it was a niche in which there was little competition, that it was knowledge I could offer papers  that they didn’t already have.


Where did the ideas of each of your books come from?
It depends. The first one, Behind the Curtain, came from sitting down with my agent and talking through what I could do that was different. The Sunderland and Clough books the publisher came to me. Inverting the Pyramid and Anatomy of England were nothing more complicated than me thinking ‘hmm, there’s might be a book in that’ and discussing it with my agent and editor.

Do you often re-read your books?
Never. I sometimes use them for reference, but I don’t sit down and read them. Just last night, in fact, I was asked a question about why Sunderland are known as the Black Cats. I knew it had something to do with the cannon that used to stand at the mouth of the river and I was googling it when I suddenly remembered I’d written about it in A Club Transformed.

Is there any one of the books which you consider as being your favourite?
Not really. Pyramid is the only one that when I was writing it I was confident it was worthwhile, but there’s a lot of stuff in that I’d change if I were writing it again – both in terms of uncovering details I hadn’t known and stylistically. But there’s bits of all of them I’m proud of and bits I’d change.

Undoubtedly the one that really made an impact was Inverting the Pyramid.  First of all, where you expecting the reaction that you got?
No. The last month or so of writing it I was waking at 6am each day, and retching with tension because I knew it was going well and I didn’t want to mess it up, which was awful and exhilarating at the same time. When I submitted it, I knew I was happy with it, and you tell yourself that that’s all that matters, but obviously you want other people to agree with you and thankfully they did.

Has there been a change in culture since you wrote that book?  Looking at the success of the Zonal Marking website it is clear that more people want to learn more about tactics.
I don’t know. I think in some ways I was just lucky and rode a wave that was coming anyway.

There is always a lot of research in your books.  How do you go about this?
It depends on the book, but the academic in me still loves sitting in a library uncovering stuff in old books or newspapers.

Equally, there are also a lot of interviews.  I get the impression you love doing these: is that the case?
Yes and no. There are few things better than talking to an old player, coach or journalist with great memories, but then there’s little worse than dozens of phone calls to an agent then hanging around in a hotel lobby for hours for five minutes of bored inanities.

How was Blizzard born?
You’ll excuse me, I hope, if I just quote the Editor’s Note from Blizzarrd issue Zero:

I’d been frustrated for some time by the constraints of the mainstream media and in various press-rooms and bars across the world, I’d come to realise I wasn’t the only one who felt journalism as a whole was missing something, that there should be more space for more in-depth pieces, for detailed reportage, history and analysis. Was there a way, I wondered, to accommodate articles of several thousand words? Could we do something that was neither magazine nor book, but somewhere in between?


As I floated thoughts and theories to anyone who would listen, I became aware there were other writers so keen to break the shackles of Search Engine Optimisation and the culture of quotes-for-quotes’-sake that they were prepared to write for a share of potential profit, that the joy of writing what they wanted and felt was important outweighed the desire to be paid. The only problem, I explained to those around the table in Fitzys, was finding a publisher equally willing to take the gamble.


I suppose you don’t really think of your old school-friends, people you only really see these days in the context of the pub and the match, as having jobs. Sitting next to me that night, though, as he’d sat next to me in sixth-form English, was my mate Peter, who happens to run a design and publishing company. Flushed on White Amarillus and a Darren Bent hat-trick, we knocked around ideas for the rest of the night; remarkably, in the cold light of morning, it still seemed a viable plan.


The result, about a year later, is The Blizzard, named after the short-lived and eccentric, but rather brilliant, Sunderland newspaper launched as “the organ of Mr Sidney Duncan” in 1893. It only ran to 12 issues, during which time Duncan, who pretty much wrote the whole thing himself, doubled the cover price in an attempt to cut circulation because he found the effort of handling all the money he was making so tiresome, a policy I’m pretty sure we won’t be following should we experience similar success.


What has the feedback been like, both from writers and readers?
Hugely positive and very encouraging. The writers have had faith in us in that they’ve worked hard and contributed articles knowing that there was no guarantee  of payment; and the readers have repaid that by responding responsibly to the pay-what-you-want model.

Is the pay what you want model working?
So far, definitely. There are a handful of people who keep paying a  penny, but it is just a handful. By and large people have responded as we hoped they would – maybe paying a penny for their first issue and then, if they found they liked it, offering an amount that seems realistic.

Given that there are so many sites writing about football, and some of the articles are truly excellent, is there space for a printed magazine? And with so much stuff being free, is there space to make money.
I hope so. I’m not sure anybody else gives you the range of articles or the depth of quality that The Blizzard does. And there are still people who like the physical feel of a book.

What future projects are you working on ?  And what's in the pipeline?
Nobody Ever Says Thank You, my biography of Brian Clough, comes out in November, and I’m working on The Outsider, a book about goalkeepers that’ll come out late next year sometime.


This article originally appeared in the November issue of the online magazine Swinging Balls.  More details about Blizzard magazine can be found here.

When a league changes format, heated debate and criticism is likely to follow.  When the rules are changed midway through a season, you can also throw in a significant element of suspicion over what the motives for such a change might be. So it was in Malta when in January it was announced that the Premier league was being expanded from ten to twelve clubs, a decision which meant that one rather than two clubs would be relegated during the season that was underway, with three clubs being promoted from the First Division. Seeing that there were two big clubs – Sliema Wanderers and Hibernians – in serious danger of relegation, the initial reaction was that this was a move brought about to avoid seeing one of them go down.  Which, considering that Hibernians actually finished second off bottom, was a rather justified way of seeing things.

In truth, it was a move pushed by Norman Darmanin Demajo who a few months earlier had won the right to lead the Malta Football Association after a long and bitter fight with previous president Dr. Joe Mifsud.  For Darmanin Demajo and the staff that he brought with him, the league needed revamping and this was the best way to achieve this. Whether that is the case remains to be seen.  That the relegation pool will now contain six teams rather than four – the mechanism of splitting the league into two after the initial two rounds remains – is an obvious benefit but it is doubtful whether the increase in the number of teams will add to the quality of the league.

It is just as doubtful whether anyone will manage to stay within touching distance of Valletta, let alone stop them. Bankrolled by a rich owner of a pharmaceutical company, Valletta have built an impressive squad that led to their complete domination of the Premier League where they went through the whole of the season without losing a game and with a gap of eight points over their closest rival.  So strong is their squad that during the summer they could afford to let go on loan three players with national team experience and Valletta players are expected to be in the starting eleven of six other Premier League teams. To that squad they’ve added the Nigerian striker Alfred Effiong – the league’s top scorer last year – and the Brazilian William Barbosa da Silva has been bought in after a career spent in Italy’s minor leagues.

Yet, undoubtedly Valletta’s biggest move of the summer was that to sign former Coventry and Barnsley striker Michael Mifsud. Mifsud’s story is an intriguing – and sad – one.  Arguably the most talented player ever to come out of Malta, his success at Coventry fueled hopes that he might make it to the Premiership, a feeling strengthened when he scored a brace against Manchester United in the League Cup. It is a feeling that he seemed to share when, with his contract at Coventry running down, he refused a move to fellow Championship side Bristol City.  There were other, rumoured, bids to sign him when that contract did come to an end but each one was turned down always in the hope of a better one coming along. That was two years ago.  Mifsud has since played for six months each with Valletta and, last season, with Qormi.  That he has now signed on for a full season would indicate that he’s come to accept that returning home is the best offer that will come along. The aim for him and his teammates will be to win everything that is out there.  This they seem set on doing if their 3-0 trashing (with a debut hat-trick by Mifsud) of neighbours and bitter rivals Floriana in the season opening Super Cup is anything to go by.

Last season, Floriana managed to dent Valletta’s celebrations when they beat them in the final of the FA Trophy.  Having finished the league in second, they are arguably their closest challengers for the league title.  Yet that Super Cup defeat and the humiliating 8-0 home defeat to AEK Larnaca in the Europa League have dampened expectations. Apart from Floriana, the other two teams who Valletta might consider as possible threats are Birkirkara and Sliema Wanderers. The first one of those two actually beat Valletta to the league title two seasons ago.  During the summer they took the surprising decision of not renewing the contract of their popular and charismatic coach Pawlu Zammit who had been seen as the main reason for Birkirkara’s title win a year earlier. In his place comes Patrick Curmi, who had done well at Marsaxlokk and who is finally tasked with managing a big club.  The retirement of club captain and legend Michael Galea leaves an emotional gap which will be felt, with Curmi acting quickly to bring in his former captain Gareth Sciberras.  Birkirkara have also revamped the foreign players on their books and will be looking at them, along with Malta internationals Shaun Bajada and Trevor Cilia, if they are to offer a serious challenge.

The same applies to Sliema Wanderers who have also brought in new foreign players in the hope of laying the foundation for a good season. Tellingly, however, their main local signings – Maltese internationals Steve Bezzina and Cleavon Frendo – both have joined from Valletta on loan. The summer has also been marked by the increasing number of Brazilian players joining Maltese club.  In the space of a couple of years these have supplanted Nigerians as the favoured imports to fill the three slots available for foreign players – somehow, the Maltese Football Association has managed to limit the number of foreign players that each team can utilise despite Malta’s ascension to the European Union – so much that now every team has at least one. Tarxien Rainbows were the pioneers of this trend and also its greatest advert. A small club used to infrequent, brief and occasionally humiliating forays in the top flight was transformed into one capable of challenging the elite thanks to their ability to attract a string of exceptionally talented (by local standards) Brazilian players. Two consecutive fifth place finishes might not seem much but for a club of Tarxien’s stature, they represent their golden era.

Tarxien are part of the group of teams for whom ending up in the Championship pool would be a good result.  Marsaxlokk are in a similar situation, although the loss of coach Patrick Curmi, along with that of top scorer Alfred Effiong, will hit them. Ambition is always burning at Hamrun Spartans who haven’t ever really managed to repeat the success that their team enjoyed during the eighties.  Midfielder Kevin Sammut has joined from Valletta – on loan – and he should be enough to ensure a degree of progress. Hibernians will be hoping for a better season than the last one when they were so close to getting relegated. Coach Mark Miller remains, although one suspects more on the strength of the league title he won three years back than for anything he has achieved more recently, but the (dismal) experiment with British players has been ditched with Hibs joining the Brazilian trend.

Thanks to their ever florid youth system, Hibernians seem to be in a position where they can avoid any scares.  Whether the same applies to Qormi seems doubtful.  The team looked weak last season and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much stronger over the summer. What could save them, however, is the presence of the three newly promoted clubs.  Inevitably, Balzan Youths, Mosta and Mqabba are bound to be tagged as relegation candidates and how they fare will determine whether the expansion has resulted in greater quality or if it has diluted it. Of the three, the best placed appear to be First Division champions Balzan who are managed by former Valletta midfielder Ivan Zammit and have signed five players on loan from their manager’s former club.  Mosta too have dipped into the Valletta loan market – they’ve signed Ian Zammit and Kurt Magro – meaning that only Mqabba have gone against the grain and effectively retained the squad that won promotion.

This article was originally published on TwoHundredPercent.net and got picked by the Guardian as one of its Top Five football reads of the week.