The Accidental Footballer cover art

The Accidental Footballer

Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Accidental Footballer

By: Pat Nevin
Narrated by: Pat Nevin
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

The Sunday Times best seller

Pat Nevin never wanted to be a professional footballer.

His future was clear, he'd become a teacher like his brothers. There was only one problem with this - Pat was far too good to avoid attention.

Raised in Glasgow's East End, Pat loved the game, playing for hours and obsessively following Celtic. But as he grew up, he also loved Joy Division, wearing his Indie 'gloom boom' coat and going on marches - hardly typical footballer behaviour!

Placed firmly in the '80s and '90s, before the advent of the Premier League, and often with racism and violence present, Pat Nevin writes with honesty, insight and wry humour. We are transported vividly to Chelsea and Everton and colourfully diverted by John Peel, Morrissey and nights out at the Hacienda.

The Accidental Footballer is a different kind of football memoir. Capturing all the joys of professional football as well as its contradictions and conflicts, it's about being defined by your actions, not your job, and it is the perfect reminder of how life can throw you the most extraordinary surprises when you least expect it.

©2021 Pat Nevin (P)2021 Octopus Publishing Group
Sports Thought-Provoking

Listeners also enjoyed...

Football and How to Survive It cover art
Mind Games: The Ups and Downs of Life and Football cover art
How to Be a Football Manager cover art
Rambling Man cover art
Born to be a Footballer: My Autobiography cover art
Around the World in 80 Minutes cover art
Don Revie cover art
Hammer Time cover art
Deadline Day cover art
Jock Stein cover art
This is the Life cover art
Nowhere to Run cover art
Unfit and Improper Persons cover art
My Wrexham Story cover art
Who Are Ya? cover art
The Boys of Winter cover art

Critic reviews

"Unusually vibrant and elegant with heroic doses of humour, insight and self-effacement, this is an absolute must-read for the football connoisseur." (Omid Djalili)

"I grew up captivated by Pat Nevin the player. As a man he taught me even more about the beauty of the game. One of football's great mavericks, and Chelsea's greatest players. And he can spin a mean tune too." (Sam Matterface)

"I used to walk miles to see Pat Nevin play football and I'd do the same now to read his thoughts. Always challenging, always entertaining." (Lord Sebastian Coe)

"A heroic outsider - a pleasure to read." (The Guardian)

"A fulsome evocation of football before the Premier League." (The i)

"Honest, raw, revealing and very funny. How to live a life and career to the full. Insightful book about the most successful outsider inside football ever...." (Henry Winter, chief football writer, The Times)

"Pat is a wonderful one-off...and this is the story of why that is." (John Murray, chief sports correspondent, BBC Radio 5 Live)

"The biggest influence of my professional career both on and off the pitch." (Graeme Le Saux)

"A refreshingly honest and thought-provoking autobiography. As deftly delivered as some of Pat's ball skills in his 1980's heyday." (ToffeeWeb)

All stars
Most relevant
It’s a good book, you learn a lot about the man and the time that he played. I bought it to hear about how he took on the thugs at Chelsea after he mentioned it on a podcast (BBC fighting talk) but there was no real depth to that or the sectarian issues with Scotland that also just got a mention with no detail.

There’s more

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Brilliant listen, a great book, well narrated by Pat himself.
Tells an interesting story which goes beyond the usual football ‘banter’.

Great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Excellent book. Well read by the author. Would highly recommend. In my top 5 for sports autobiographies.

Brilliant audiobook!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Refreshingly different to your usual footballers’ biography. I enjoyed listening to Pat Nevin’s story. I did not know much about him until I read this book.

Well told autobiography.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Loved Pat's writing and the balanced way he tells his story - particularly enjoyed the authentic Glaswegian accent when deployed

Great insights and humour

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews