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Brian Glanville, whose insightful football writing had a profound influence on generations of reporters and readers alike, has died aged 93.
A novelist and respected columnist, Glanville was a prolific commentator on his beloved game, a passionate chronicler of Italian football and author of some of football’s most influential books.
He spent some 30 years as a football correspondent for the Sunday Times, contributed to World Soccer magazine for more than five decades, and wrote compelling obituaries for the Guardian. His most recently published tributes considered the careers of Northern Ireland and Aston Villa winger Peter McParland and the Manchester United legend Denis Law.
A lifelong Arsenal fan, his first book – with the Gunners winger Cliff Bastin – was published in 1950 and he was still writing about the north London club decades later, his final work a history of Highbury published in 2006.
Glanville’s The Story of the World Cup is considered a seminal work on the global tournament, and other books, such as The Puffin Book of Football, fostered a lifelong devotion to the sport for many young readers. He won admirers in the US long before the game enjoyed a wider following there, and Sports Illustrated’s Paul Zimmerman called him “the greatest football writer of all time”.
As well as numerous novels and short stories, two plays and a musical, he produced the screenplay for the 1967 documentary Goal!, and saw Sir John Gielgud play the lead in a BBC radio production of his A Visit to the Villa.
His eye for the global game in the 1960s and 70s especially earned Glanville a place on the jury for the annual Ballon d’Or.
Glanville had a good relationship with England’s World Cup winning captain, Bobby Moore, but was acerbically critical of the national team’s managers, and pulled no punches when it came to Sir Alf Ramsey, the victor in 1966 but whose reputation was tarnished by the team’s failure in the heat of the Mexico tournament four years later.
“I have all sorts of amusing memories of Alf Ramsey, but he was a very strange man,” Glanville once recalled. “He should have gone two years before he did. He’d blown it. He’d gone. He’d shot his bolt. I got on very well with Walter Winterbottom, but he was a rotten manager. Bobby Robson was grotesquely overrated. I thought he was a very inadequate manager and he failed so badly in Europe. He made a shocking job of it. He had a lot of luck. We nearly reached the World Cup final in 1990, but that was luck more than judgment.”
Andrew Neil, among Glanville’s editors at the Sunday Times, posted on X: “Brian Glanville was indeed a true great. One of the brightest assets during my 11 years editing The Sunday Times. One of the greatest ever football writers.”
The Guardian’s former chief sports writer Richard Williams also paid tribute on social media, saying: “RIP Brian Glanville, 93, maestro of the football stadium press box (and purveyor of truly awful jokes).”
Tim Vickery, the BBC’s South American football correspondent, added on X: “I owe a huge debt to this man. A True giant of our trade, a mighty source of internacionalist inspiration. RIP Brian Glanville.”
Brian Glanville, football writer and author. Born 24 September, 1931. Died 16 May, 2025
