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Four Four Two magazine
Ugly, witty, depressing, appalling and enthralling all at once.
The Times
January 24, 2005
By Tom Dart
SEX AND DRUGS AND lots of goals: Such is the life of the professional footballer. That's certainly the impression you get from reading Playing Away: The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals, by Matthew Clark, a colossal collection of indiscretions from those within the game. George Best's staggering exploits alone take up 17 pages, while David Beckham's off-pitch scoring merits ten. The antics of Frank Worthington, the striker who, legend has it failed his medical at Anfield because of high blood pressure brought on by excessive sexual activity, are hard to top. As Worthington said: "George Best wants every girl to love him. I just wanted them to go to bed with me." Trashily entertaining, the regular flow of Sunday tabloid exposés - there was another Best one yesterday - means an updated version will surely be due before long.
FOOTBALL BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT...
The Independent
December 14, 2004
David Llewellyn
GIVEN the way Faria Alam, La Manga, "dogging" and Wayne Rooney's nocturnal activities all penetrated the red-top press and beyond, Matthew Clark's encyclopaedic Playing Away: The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals is timely indeed.
SEX AND THE CITY GOALIE
The People
December 26, 2005
By Tom Hopkinson
ANY fella in the doghouse for not buying the missus the right present yesterday? Right, here's the plan - nip out and buy a copy of Matthew Clark's new book Playing Away, and show her life would be far worse with one of these scoundrels. The self-professed A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals catalogues the shenanigans of the usual suspects such as George Best, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Sven Goran Eriksson. But, Bestie and Rooney apart, they look like saints next to some of the cads who get a dishonourable mention. CONFIDENTIAL'S favourite story involves ex-Man City stopper Andy Dibble. Standing naked at the top of the stairs with a woman in the bedroom and her furious husband bursting through the front door, he came out with the immortal line: "It's not what it looks like." And hats off to Billy Jennings - the former Hammer performed the unthinkable and bedded Best's then girlfriend Angie MacDonald James behind his back.
LEG ROVERS FC
THE TARNISHED SOUL OF THE BEAUTIFUL GAME
The team that only plays away
Sunday Mercury July 3, 2005
By Tom Wells
IT could be the highest-scoring side ever to grace football. But the names on our Midland XI's team sheet do not have a deadly eye for goal - just for the fairer sex. Nearly every member of the fantasy side has found himself at the centre of a sex scandal or two. And their love-rat antics have been immortalised in a new book out this month.
Playing Away; The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals details some of the most infamous lady-killers in British football history. The list includes legends like George Best and Frank Worthington, as well as a host of lesser stars from the lower leagues. Armed with the book, we put together a team of superstuds who would be a love-match for anyone off the pitch.
Our Sin City squad is managed by former Aston Villa boss Ron Atkinson. In 1983 he plunged his then club, Manchester United, into crisis after admitting that he was cheating on his wife Margaret - just after winning the FA Cup.
In goal we went for another former Villa man, keeper Mark Bosnich, who was once captured on video with team-mate Dwight Yorke in a booze-filled sex session with FOUR women.
In defence, we plumped for ex-Nottingham Forest full back Viv Anderson, former Villa captain Paul McGrath, one-time Derby centre back Taribo West and former Coventry City skipper Dion Dublin. Anderson,an England international, played away from wife Debra with restaurant manager Nicole Burton. She said at the time: 't took me six months to train him up to standard in the bedroom."
Booze-loving McGrath had a secret love-child with mistress Paula Hamilton, the first of several affairs. West, a Nigerian international and pastor, said he specialised in clearing the streets of prostitutes and delivering them to God. But his wife lost patience and divorced him, claiming West had refused to sleep with her. Ex-Villa star Dublin, who now plays for Leicester City, was left red-faced after finding out that one dangerous liaison had left him with a love-child called Adam. Our midfield is made up of Serbian Sasa Curcic, Halesowen-born winger Lee Sharpe and lug-eared anchorman Carlton Palmer. Curcic, who plied his trade with Villa in the Premiership, eventually gave up football for sex. "There is a world of difference between football and sex - no question about that," he announced. "I would not sign for another club for $15 million - but it would be different if they were to offer me15 different woman from all around the world."
Sharpe, the recent star of Celebrity Love Island, has bedded a string of beauties in his time. One girl, model Ivana Horvat, said: "Ijust couldn't resist his huge, sexy thighs."
Palmer, born in West Bromwich and an ex-Coventry City player, was convicted in 1997 of indecent assault after forcing a girl to grope him in a Leeds bar. A judge told him: "You are plainly guilty of a grubby little offence."
Up front, Stan Collymore leads the line after he admitted taking part in "dogging" sessions on Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, with other couples. He is joined in our 4-3-3 formation by Dwight Yorke - who accompanied Mark Bosnich in those dodgy home videos. Former Villa and Wolves legend Andy Gray completes the trio.
The Sky TV presenter is the father of five children by FOUR different women. But should the once golden-maned lothario tire with age, we have a suitable replacement on the bench - former Nottingham Forest striker Lee Chapman. Chapman, married to actress Leslie Ash, left his wife battling to walk again after she injured herself when she allegedly fell off their bed during a vigorous bout of love-making.
Read the scores on the doors
By Paul Symes
News Shopper
Playing Away: The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals, by Matthew Clark, charts the off-the-field conquests of some of the beautiful game's biggest names. From Best to Becks, Rooney to roasting, it has all the angles covered. The book is thoroughly researched and pulls no punches in exposing the tawdry truth - indeed, its publication had to be shelved for a year owing to legal wranglings. Personally, I would rather drink a cup of cold sick than read more revelations about the unsavoury antics of Collymore and Co, whose reputations for womanising and rowdiness have done more than most to drag the sport's image through the gutter. But the illuminating tales of players from a bygone, and somehow more innocent era such as Bexleyheath-born Malcolm Allison - are another matter.
A mercurial talent, the former Addick dazzled opponents on the pitch and women off it, but ultimately suffered a fate similar to that which befell George Best. Like Best, Allison also became dependent on alcohol, and is now said to while away his hours in relative poverty in a one-bedroom council house. A father-of-six, he defaulted on his child maintenance payments after losing all his money in a financial scandal. But it had started so brightly for the man dubbed Big Mal, described by Clark as a "gambler, drinker, walking financial disaster and frequent illicit lover". Available from all good book stores... and some rubbish ones as well.
On the Bounce: Tales of football's dirty rats
Liverpool Echo 11/20/2004
By Stuart Rayner
IF you're the kind of person who loves scouring the Sunday red tops for scandal, I've got a little something for you. Playing Away: The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals is in the shops from Monday, but if you get lucky this weekend you won't have to pay for it. At 361 pages it's an exhaustive account but the A to Z format makes it easy to dip in and out to your heart's content (this is a family newspaper, you'll have to write your own punchlines). There are a few surprise entries, whereas others have been round the block. If this kind of thing floats your boat - or you're a footballer's lawyer - Playing Away should fill your stockings this Christmas.
Now I'm not saying any of these tales are true, but the book tells of how a drunken accident got Ian Bishop caught up in a gay sex scandal, how comedy Mark Lawrenson is a prolific ladies' man, why Imre Varadi's wife used to dread Christmas, what Robbie Fowler's 72- year old nan made of her grandson's exploits, Peter Reid's "den of iniquity", what Roy Evans said of Don Hutchison's flashing, why one man was relieved to hear his girl friend had run off with Gazza, and how a quiet night in with his girlfriend abruptly halted one of Kevin Campbell's relationships. There are also dishonourable mentions for John Barnes, Peter Beagrie, Jamie Carragher, Stan Collymore, David Ginola, Thomas Gravesen, Andy Gray, Bruce Grobelaar, Craig Hignett, Calamity James, Anders Limpar, Dominic Matteo, Mark Palios, Wayne Rooney, Neil Ruddock, Graeme Souness, Gary Speed, Mickey Thomas, Pat van den Hauwe and Mark Wright.
Hot Stars magazine
27 November 2004
OK, football sucks. unless it's an England match, when we get to check out some tasty fellas we actually recognise. But what we prefer is when the hunky footie starts get all saucy and end up on the front pages! So if you fancy reading all about Stan Collymore's "dogging" episode once again, or finding out why craggy old George Best has a rep for being a stud, this handy A-Z is fab. Outrageously, there are no pics, but it's quite an entertaining read nevertheless.
Soccer stars score as they play the field
AAP Sports News Australia
April 7 2005
DWIGHT YORKE may have moved to Sydney FC but the soccer star's sexual exploits are still in the news in Britain. YORKE is included in a new book called Playing Away - The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals. Shortly after moving to Manchester United in 1998, YORKE teamed up with former Socceroo goalkeeper MARK BOSNICH for an orgy with four women that he videoed. He later threw the tape into his rubbish bin but it still ended up in the hands of a national newspaper, which printed a picture on its front page. The book says that YORKE even convinced one of his nightclub conquests -- not a soccer fan -- that he was a postman named BRIAN. The book quotes the woman as saying that he told her people recognised him in the club because he delivered their letters.
http://www.parlonsfoot.com
Matthew Clark hopes that its work will be sold well to the women of players, who should wish to read the exploits of their husbands.
BabyFurst college magazine, Lancashire
Very, very funny and enlightening.
English league footballers admit they could have a different girl every night in their celebrity lifestyles.
Bollywood News Mumbai
May 17
By Bollywood Reporter Ms Divya Chawla
"It wasn't as often as a different girl every night, but it could have been," Scotland striker Frank McAvennie, who moved to London in 1985 when West Ham signed him from St Mirren, recounts in a new book, Playing Away - The A-Z of Soccer Sex Scandals.
"Frank was mobbed wherever he went, even in Marks and Spencer," Anita, his girlfriend at the time, said. "We used to go on holiday to places like Ibiza and there would be one topless girl after another coming to talk to him as if I wasn't there."
Former Portsmouth and Newcastle striker Micky Quinn was another Eighties star with a regular supply of goals and girls. "Women would throw themselves at me," he says. "I felt like Rod Stewart. When I was at Portsmouth I actually had four birds on the go at one time. They were all barmaids, which says a lot about the life I was leading."
Dwight Yorke was sold to Blackburn Rovers when Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson finally lost patience with the strikers socialising. Shortly after moving to Old Trafford in 1998, the Trinidad and Tobago international teamed up with Mark Bosnich, his former Aston Villa colleague, for an orgy with four women that he videoed. Anxious to avoid detection, he threw the tape into his rubbish bin but it still ended up in the hands of a national newspaper, which printed a picture on its front page.
But Yorke was not known to everyone. He convinced one of his nightclub conquests that he was a postman named Brian. "People were coming past and saying hello to him and he said it was because he delivered their letters. I believed him. He seemed a lovely bloke," she said.