The Great and the Good

In The Great and the Good, Ireland's leading football pundit and legend of the game John Giles looks back on more than fifty years of football, at developments in the game from the post-War period to the present day, the great players who drove it forward, the visionary managers and their teams, and the age-old question of what makes a player good and what makes one great.

From his earliest days, John Giles can recall pondering the subject. 'You'd hear about certain 'great' players, such as Stanley Matthews, but no one would ever explain why they were great. And it's a thing that has always frustrated me: trying to define what makes a player great, and what separates the great from the good.'

Now the man himself brings us the answers and celebrates the great ones, from Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Dave Mackay, John Charles, Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Greaves to Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, John Robertson, Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten, Lionel Messi, Paul Scholes and many more. It will include a section on Irish players including detailed analysis of such greats as Roy Keane, Liam Brady and Paul McGrath. And, finally, Giles names the player he considers the greatest of them all.

John Giles was born in Dublin in 1940. A prodigiously gifted young footballer, at just 15 years of age, Giles moved to Manchester, playing for the Manchester United youth team. And in 1959, the year after the Munich Air Disaster, he made his debut for the Man United first team against Spurs, beginning a career at the top of the game that was to span three decades. He moved to the then second-division side Leeds United in 1963 where he became the linchpin of one of the world's great sides of the 60s and 70s. He played for the Republic of Ireland for almost two decades before moving to a player-manager role in later years. Giles is now a well known and greatly respected football analyst.

In The Great and the Good , Ireland's leading football pundit and legend of the game John Giles looks back on more than fifty years of football, at developments in the game from the post-War period to the present day, the great players who drove it forward, the visionary managers and their teams, and the age-old question of what makes a player good and what makes one great.From his earliest days, John Giles can recall pondering the subject. 'You'd hear about certain 'great' players, such as Stanley Matthews, but no one would ever explain why they were great. And it's a thing that has always frustrated me: trying to define what makes a player great, and what separates the great from the good.'Now the man himself brings us the answers and celebrates the great ones, from Stanley Matthews, Tom Finney, Dave Mackay, John Charles, Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Greaves to Pele, Franz Beckenbauer, John Robertson, Diego Maradona, Marco van Basten, Lionel Messi, Paul Scholes and many more. It will include a section on Irish players including detailed analysis of such greats as Roy Keane, Liam Brady and Paul McGrath. And, finally, Giles names the player he considers the greatest of them all.

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