Enke's tragic tale worthy winner of sports award

SOCCER:A FAIR few people down the years have written books trying to provide insights into the peculiar existence within football of goalkeepers.

Most have played in the position at some stage and so provide an inside view of what it feels like to be one of the game’s outsiders.

It's not clear whether Ronnie Reng, the German journalist and novelist, ever played in goals or anywhere else for that matter, but he has now written two wonderful books on the subject with this year's A Life Too Short, The Tragedy of Robert Enke(€21) as affecting as his Keeper of Dreams(about Lars Leese, briefly of Barnsley) was entertaining nearly a decade ago.

Both provide fascinating insights into the lives of their subjects although the recent passing of Gary Speed has served to highlight the deeper importance of the issues involved in the story of Enke, the German international goalkeeper who committed suicide just over two years ago while suffering a recurrence of the depression that had seriously affected his career some six years earlier.

Reng first met Enke during his time with Benfica and their paths crossed many times after that but the goalkeeper’s difficulties with his mental health do not seem to have featured prominently in their conversations as they became friends over the years that followed.

The pair planned to work on a book together, though, and in the end Reng’s biography, based on conversations with Enke’s wife Teresa and friends, as well as on his diaries, is a sensitive account of a great sportman’s anguish as he tries to cope with tragedy in his personal life and the particular pressures his profession exerts on an all too fragile human being.

Enke wrestles with the problems of moving abroad, of media attention, of perceived failure and, subsequently, with the death of his young daughter. Most of all, though, he battles with an illness that, when it strikes, make his various problems, large or small, seem utterly insurmountable.

The book, which was named as the William Hill Sports Book of the Year the day after Speed’s death, provides a moving account of Enke’s life and, ultimately, the period leading up to his death. He comes across as a deeply vulnerable character, too nice for his own good perhaps given he inhabits a world dominated by the likes of Oliver Kahn and Jens Lehman, goalkeepers who appear to scorn the slightest hint of self doubt as a sign of weakness, something to exploited by rivals.

And yet for most of his career almost nobody was aware of the scale of Enke’s difficulties with depression and how, for instance, after one poor game at Barcelona, he had over time been driven to the point of despair. One of the many lessons, of course, is that we should know better than to simply accept the image of boundless self-confidence put forward for public consumption by our sporting heroes.

Another is that like the many tens of thousands of supporters who attend games each week while suffering such problems themselves, players need a greater awareness and acceptance of the issues surrounding mental health if openness if to become a more palatable option.

By comparison with that, pretty much any football biography is going to seem a little on the light side which is a little unfortunate for Ronnie Whelan's Walk On, My Life in Red(€22.50) with Tommy Conlon, which is still a good deal better than most of the biographies that make it on to the shelves in this increasingly crowded market.

Whelan provides an interesting account (well handled by Conlon) of life at Liverpool towards the end of the club’s heyday; contrasting the styles of the succession of managers he worked under, the many world-class players he played alongside and the particular culture of the place.

He’s particularly good on how he feels it went wrong for Graeme Souness at the club, the financial side of his own Anfield career and his dismay at the way it suddenly ended with the withdrawal of a one-year contract that he had reluctantly decided to sign after initially holding out for a two-year deal.

There’s some decent stuff too on his various injury problems later on in his career and, of course, his time with the Republic of Ireland which, he admits, was not as productive really as it might have been.

He is a little less successful when it comes to providing an insight into the emotional devastation that must have accompanied the tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough around the club and when it comes to the difficulties suffered by Kenny Dalglish in the wake of those events – problems that ultimately led him to end his first stint as manager of the club. Whelan insists he was utterly unaware of the growing burden the Scot was under.

“In hindsight,” he observes, “maybe we should have picked up on it sooner. But we hadn’t, because we were typical footballers and typical footballers are not the most sensitive of people.”

It's been a good year for books on the game here, meanwhile, with Seán Ryan making an overdue return to the scene with his Official History of the FAI Cup and Brian Kennedy making an impressive debut with Just Follow the Floodlights, The Complete Guide to League of Ireland Football.

Kennedy’s guide is an altogether different animal to the Irish Football Handbook’s produced a couple of decades back by Gerry Desmond and Dave Galvin with the emphasis on narrative rather than statistics but the levels of love involved are clearly just as high.

The author made what appears to have been a fairly frantic dash around the country’s various grounds during the early part of the season just finished, putting together club histories and reviewing the snacks on sale to supporters as he went.

The result is highly-entertaining stuff with tales from up and down the country as well as potted histories of the clubs that have come down the years.

There are some cracking photographs too including one of Dundalk’s one-armed striker Jimmy Hasty although sadly not the one to which, legend has it, somebody in production at the Independent, assuming the picture in front of him had simply been poorly printed, added a second arm.

One of the more awkward admissions by those who have recoiled at the mere sight or sound of Gary Neville over the past 20 years have been forced to make, is that he’s actually turning out to be a likeable pundit.

Mr Manchester United has been admirably impartial in his role so far. As a fan first and a player second, he was prone to the same irrational tribalism as those on the terraces, but he has so far managed to park that in his new career.

It wasn’t always thus.

"John Barnes was vastly talented, and I hated him for it," he says in his autobiography Red: My Autobiography(Bantam Press, €23.75), when describing schooldays surrounded by triumphant Liverpool fans in the 1980s.

It was the same rationale that led so many to despise him. He wasn’t blessed with Barnes’s ability, but he was motivated to the point of obsession, vocally and visually partisan and, of course, hugely successful. Many hated him for it.

More’s the pity, then, that he chose to tone it down in Red. It’s an enjoyable account of a career that delivered way beyond expectations, but unlike his playing days, he often takes a step back, or let’s someone off the hook, and ultimately disappoints.

Arsenal’s Gallic “arrogance” grates to this day, as does the mismanagement of England by a succession of FA blazers, but criticism of anyone closer to Old Trafford is lacking, even if the suggestion is there after United failed to build on their 1999 treble.

Strange, too, is his omission of Eric Cantona from his best XI. One can only assume, after lavishing praise on the Frenchman throughout, he was left out to spare Wayne Rooney’s feelings.

Not quite the Neville we know and hate. Perhaps, Sky got to him too soon.

There may never be a satisfactory answer but the question will always be one worth posing: why have Scottish football managers enjoyed such a disproportionate amount of success in comparison to their peers?

Michael Grant and Rob Robertson's excellent book, The Management – Scotland's Great Football Bosses(Birlinn, €13.20) endeavours to find an answer and succeeds as best it can, but there is no strict template for success.

The Management covers the usual explanations of humble beginnings, working class, socialist roots and family values – all of which are very pertinent but tell only part of the story. After all, football is traditionally the game of the proletariat far beyond Scottish borders.

The answer is a lot more complex, but the authors leave no corner in darkness in their search, charting the lives, careers, successes and failures (both personally and professionally) of The Four Kings(Matt Busby, Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Alex Ferguson) and many more.

Testimony from those inextricably linked, by blood or by chance, to the men who shaped modern British and world football, and indeed the men themselves where possible, makes for an enthralling read.

Stories of reckless disregard for personal wellbeing, bloody-minded determination, innovative training methods and psychology, intimidation and, at times, bizarrely combustive behaviour paint the picture of some very different characters united by an indomitable will to win and to emulate or surpass what has gone before.

Perhaps most heartening is a universal distaste for sectarianism – illustrated beautifully by Stein’s advice to young fans of the Glasgow rivals to “stick together and love one another, whatever happens” - and a commonly held belief that sport should transcend such boundaries by uniting players, fans and managers for the collective good.