Graeme Souness – Football: My Life, My Passion

by Graeme Souness

Graeme Souness is a Glasgow Rangers icon, and a Liverpool legend in the same bracket as Kenny Dalglish, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher.He has racked up getting on for fifty years in and around the world of professional football. The game has been his life, and his enduring passion.Souness has written a perceptive and opinionated autobiography. It chronicles one of the most successful and colourful careers in the history of British football. But it also provides an intriguing assessment of the game which has dominated his existence, drawing extensively on his incredibly rich and varied experiences as a player, manager and pundit.The result is a shrewd, incisive and hard-hitting memoir, at times tinged with hindsight and regret, which also grapples with many of the major talking points affecting the game today. It is shot through with Souness' trademark tenacity and wisdom, and with fantastic anecdotes from his glittering career.In many ways, My Life, My Passion is the story of the last half-century of British football writ large.

Genres: Football, Autobiography

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 19, 2017

Reviews

[Steve Parcell · Rating 1 out of 5]

The poorest least interesting football autobiography I have read. It was like reading a list of events and achievements. Little emotion or humour, it was monotonous and Souness comes across as quite arrogant and one dimensional

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The biographical elements were short of revelation and the opinions on the game too repetitive for this to live long in the memory. It wasn't awful, but too much was given over to repeating scorelines and moaning at modern footballers.

He is consistent with his TV punditry, but I don't agree that players should do more for TV - yes, it pays their wages, but equally, it's their actions on the pitch that attracts Sky's customers and allows Souness to get paid handsomely for talking about it. Souness is also a big fan of rallying against 'them' as 'they say...' a lot of things, in keeping with the book's tone of old-fashioned values against the pampered modern fools. He even contradicts himself at times, justifying his teammates for eating rubbish because they won things, but painting himself as some trailblazer when he unsuccessfully tried to get his players to eat more healthily when manager.

The biographical elements were just quite boring, his playing days seemingly incident-free and his management stories mainly being the centre circle flag and that he knew Ali Dia was awful. Rather than being selective, his ghostwriter skimmed over his career and included a lot of results, rarely providing details that would have made it more interesting.

The main saving grace was that it was quite short, as it enabled you to get a feel for his personality without having to suffer his assertions for too long. Just because he thinks certain players were as good in his day, that doesn't make it fact. If they had such a poor diet and could still win European trophies, it doesn't seem that far fetched that the best players today are objectively at a higher level, we just don't have a stopwatch to measure it. He may have been a truly great player but this book was very average.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve been reading a lot of books either by or about Graeme Souness and when you read them consecutively you can see a lot of similarities between them. This one especially has much in common with ‘The Management Years’ from 1999, albeit adding another 18 years.

That still does not distract from how entertaining it is to read. A lot of the pre-millennium stuff has been diluted somewhat to fit in chapters relating to what has happened since but it’s still a very good overview of Graeme’s footballing career from playing in school teams to becoming a pundit with Sky Sports.

I must admit that I have preferred reading Souness’ take on his own career rather than those who have written about him. The man is refreshingly honest and doesn’t shy away from giving his opinion, even if I might not always agree. Much like one of his last books, it’s interesting reading his predictions in the final chapter (written in 2017) and comparing them to how much the football landscape has changed in the 4 short years since.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Graeme Souness was a footballer, football manager and now football pundit. I don't think he explains his playing career effectively. In his youth career, he seems to suggest he was often getting sent off, and liked to party… but yet seemed to progress fine and eventually signed for Liverpool where he won many trophies. I think there is a much more compelling story to tell here. His management career is better written but yet it is often told in non-chronological order which makes it harder to understand his journey. Occasionally, he does give some good insight, but I often felt it was lacking in the early parts of the book. I think some of the best parts are when he explains how the modern game has changed, such as:

"You can't fall out with players today, because if you fall out with one; he has two or three really close pals and very quickly you could end up with half the dressing room against you - and half the dressing room might be worth £200 million"

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A forceful and opionated narrative of a life in football, precisely his image as a great player and leader on the pitch. Clearly an astute judge of what makes a great player or team, with the analysis of the great Liverpool teams he played in being particularly striking, but this narrative leaves the jury out on his management skills. It's an entertaining read but doesn't dig particularly deep so joins the plethora of football autubiographies that come and go.

[Getvoldsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scottish readers best avoid his obsession with and use of WE when talking about the English Premier League may annoy, at times it felt like Rupert Murdoch had edited it to be a promotional tool for Sky Sports.

That said the parts covering his career as a player and in management did prove interesting.

[Iain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, a short but sweet jaunt through the playing and managing career of an absolute giant of the British game.

Clearly very headstrong in his playing and early management days, he acknowledges he was too intense and thoughtless about others' feelings back then.

A little lacking in detail on his time managing Liverpool, but no punches pulled other than that.

[Robert Reid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting biography of one of Scottish football's legends. Typical of the man it was opinionated in places but not in a bad way. I quite like to hear the opinions. Didn't really like the writing style where I thought the sentence structure was quite poor in places and the poor use of language did at times detract from the story. Graeme was of course a footballer not an English professor.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Read.

Souness is very honest and it makes for a great read. I would have liked to hear more insight into the dressing rooms particularly during his spell as manager of Liverpool. I found the Michael Knighton section interesting and very surprising.
Overall a great read.

[Alan Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intelligent pundit

Sourness is an intelligent pundit but although I found the early part of his career interesting, his views on the modern game became a bit dull and the book tailed away...

[MR S WOODWARD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep insights & honest perspective of football

Really enjoyed the book. Souness was a fantastic player and manager to and extent so hearing his simple perspective of today’s football world was very interesting

[FellowBibliophile KvK · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing.

A handful of chapters on his playing, 90% whinging about how things are no longer like the good old days.

Not to mention that, like Sir Alex Ferguson, he a) mentions Big Jock, b) completely refuses to address Big Jock's cover up of Torbett and others.

[Navdeep Rehill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative

An interesting perspective on football from one of the game's larger than life characters. Would strongly recommended having a read of it.

[Martin]

After reading this book my respect for graeme has changed .. The book is all me me me and you would think that no one else has done more in the sport or better than him.

[Patrick Oakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man who is open & honest

Great read, one of the old school!.. Experienced so much as a player, manager and pundit and is not afraid to tell you how it is/was.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic retelling of his career and a tiny bit of life.

Very average book that offers little insight into Souness or football

[Ben Twoonezero · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book by a excellent footballer, a few criticisms 1. it kept jumping about in the order of the story 2. It was a bit thin they could have done with more detail and substance.

[Andyfff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book.
Been a while since I read a footballers biography but he did offers some thoughts and insight on the game.
Came across as honest opinion.

[Paul Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not usually a biography reader but I really enjoyed this insight to a footballer from my era. An interesting study into his character and how football clubs were run in the glory years.

[Dean Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant one of my hero's

[Jack Youd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was exactly what I thought a Graeme Souness book would be. At times he sounds like a bitter old man but there was some good stories in there and it is worth a read. Good read.