The Walls

Move aside, Zlatan and Roy Keane: James McCleans The Walls is the most honest, intimate, revealing football autobiography of our time.

By the time he was 11, he knew how to make a petrol bomb. And yet, when he went on his first trip as an under-19 international footballer, he was self-conscious because he didnt know how to use a knife and fork. In The Walls, James McClean has produced a magnificently detailed, honest and revealing account of a life lived between worlds, the places that talent can take you, the sometimes crushing pressures of fame, and the joys and costs of standing up for your beliefs.

McClean tells the story of his Derry childhood: the cheevies and riots, the street football, and the puzzling remarks people sometimes made about his origins. He was a gifted footballer, good enough to play for his beloved Derry City at 19; but rarely has a player risen as suddenly and unexpectedly as McClean did – from the League of Ireland to starting and scoring goals in the Premier League in the space of a year. At Sunderland, McCleans decision not to wear the Remembrance poppy went unnoticed in 2011, but caused a firestorm in 2012 – changing his life and that of his family forever. McClean explains the origins of his stance, the odd history of the poppy in English football, and the differing ways the matter was handled by his clubs over the years.

If The Walls is a passionate articulation of McCleans identity and values, it is also a remarkably open-hearted exploration of his weaknesses and obsessions. It includes laugh-out-loud funny accounts of his misadventures with expensive cars, his addiction to football boots, and his struggles, as a young footballer living alone, with household appliances. It also includes searching discussions of his struggles to control his rage, his obsessional eating and training regimens, and his relationships with managers. It brings us inside his twelve years (and 103 caps) with the Republic of Ireland, and a club career that had a late flourish as he helped lead Wrexham up the divisions. The book includes the voices of McCleans wife, his agent and other people close to him, whose perspectives often differ fascinatingly from his own.

The Walls is a sensationally entertaining read, and one of the most deeply engaging books ever written about professional sport.