It's a tale as old as the football biography itself . . . Boy meets ball and falls in love, boy becomes famous and discovers "birds and booze," quickly coming to prefer these new friends to his original heart-throb, boy discovers that he can only indulge himself fully in his new pastimes if he continues to be admired for his skill at his first.
If it's a fairly familiar story, Bestie is at least one of the more interesting and better-executed examples of the genre. For a start, of course, Best himself, the outstanding footballing talent of his generation, makes a far better subject than most of the run-of-the-mill players who see fit to churn out this sort of stuff these days, while Joe Lovejoy, football correspondent at the Sunday Times, has long been a cut above the average soccer writer and that, too, is reflected in this, his first book - and the most insightful yet to be written about the Belfastman.
Emmet Malone