GARY LINEKER: A PORTRAIT OF A FOOTBALL ICON

Chris Evans Bloomsbury £18.99 Given he hung up his boots more than 30 years ago, and began his punditry career at the dawn of the Premier League age, it’s very easy to forget just what an accomplished, groundbreaking forward Gary Lineker was. This polished, nuanced biography unearths a few nuggets about the managers who made him. There’s the ferocity and old-school discipline of Jock Wallace, the obtuseness of Johan Cruyff – who played the poacher out wide at Barcelona – and the steel and charisma of Everton supremo Howard Kendall, while the section covering his brief spell at Japan’s Nagoya Grampus Eight is curious. The talisman used his pace and precision runs to deadly effect throughout his career, so there’s a plethora of goals to savour: the hat-tricks against Poland at the 1986 World Cup which propelled him to superstardom, and for Barça in a 1987 El Clasico, plus his strikes at the 1990 World Cup – a tournament which helped English football to haul itself out of the dark ages. This account is like Lineker the player: fast-paced and never short of entertainment.