The Dynamo Football Bookclub
The Dynamo Football Book Club is the podcast for football fans who love a good read. Each week, we dive into books by and about footballers — from autobiographies and biographies to ghostwritten epics and hidden gems. If Vardy’s vodka, Maradona mayhem, or the Cruyff kidnapping are your thing,, we’ve got you covered. We read em, so you don’t have to (although some of em you really ought to). The episodes are not tied to the match day cycle and can be listened to any time and in any order. Expect a lively chat, deep dives and a good old larf, har har. 🎙️ New episodes every week. ⚽️ Great for fans of football history, sportswriting, player memoirs, and podcast book clubs. ♬ Music by the wonderful Darragh Fenlon. *formerly the Ademola Bookmen Podcast.
Episodes
⚽ The Dynamo Football Book Club Podcast — Episode 39: Di Stéfano
We kick off our rebrand as The Dynamo Football Book Club with a book about a real legend Di Stéfano by Ian Hawkey.
Alfredo Di Stéfano — the Blonde Arrow 🏹 — won the first five European Cups 🏆 with Real Madrid, played for three national teams 🌍, and lived a life packed with drama: a Venezuelan kidnapping 🕵️,...
It is our 8th edition of Injury Time, and we return to the football musical canon. This time round, we are listening to football’s greatest rappers. No Ballon D’or winners this time, but one World Cup winner and lots of hits on YouTube and a lady somehow singing with a Liverpool winger’s voice. It’s not John Barnes; he has been banned.
Please d...
In Episode 38, we discuss the life – or rather The Three Lives – of the Kaiser Franz Beckenbauer by Uli Hesse.
Another of the faces on football’s Mount Rushmore, Beckenbauer is one of only three men to win the World Cup as a player and a manager and he is the only one of those three guys who also won three European Cups on the bounce with his c...
For the 7th edition of Injury Time, we are picking the best and most interesting players who have received drug bans. From party boys like Diego to your boring performance enhancing types like Stam, we take a tour through the players who were caught with their hands in their wife’s medicine cabinet. This is also our first episode to feature an alleged war criminal.
In Episode 37, we visit the captivating story of Gazza in Italy.
This rather short book by Daniel Storey really packs a punch. Having read so many of these books by now, this one highlights the most important element of all - an interesting protagonist. Gazza is one of the most interesting of all - gifted, haunted and poor entertainment gold.
Have a listen to hear about him slapping an elderly Agnelli on his bald pate, faking ...
In our sixth edition of Injury Time, we take times in a different direction, with something of a Football Top of the Pops.
Do you know which players have had songs in the UK charts? We give you a blast of the Top 5 and this is not according to our own tastes but on the basis of where they charted in the British charts.
Read more
In Episode 36, we discuss Gladiator, the autobiography of Francesco Totti. With nicknames such as The Eight King of Rome, Totti had other much better possible names for this book. And yet he went for Gladiator…
But what a career the man had, 251 goals in 619 appearances for his hometown team, Roma. He played his first game for the Giallorossi when he was only 17 years old. A...
It’s the 5th episode of Ademola Bookmen Injury Time and this week we are choosing 5-a-side teams of the best players never to win the Premier League. To keep the golf theme of the week going, it's the Colin Montgomerie Derby.
With Johnny having won the previous three encounters of these 5-a-sides (as well as the Forest-United one), Al’s pride ...
In continuation of God month on the Ademola Bookmen Podcast, we travel to the south coast to check on in folk legend Matt Le Tissier and his autobiography Taking Le Tiss
The famous one-club Le Tissier scored some cracking goals in his 16 years with Southampton. This book was written in 2009 so before Matt went off the deep end a bit with conspiracy theories and the likes.
Please do check it out and be sure to like and subscribe.
...
Let’s see what our cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence machine has to say – can a team of legendary Forest players beat the mighty United?
Ahead of the Nottingham v. Manchester United game tomorrow night, Al and Johnny are picking draft 5-a-side teams for either club. It’s Al’s all-time Forest team versus Johhny’s all-time United.
Read more
In Episode 34, we review Philippe Auclair’s book about arguably the greatest of all Premier League players and certainly the coolest – Eric Cantona.
French football’s enfant terrible washed up on the shores of British football seeking refuge from the tyranny of the French FA’s capricious officials. Driven from his home country due to his uncont...
In our third instalment of Ademola Bookmen Injury Time, we are doing a 5-a-side draft of red hair footballers. Yes folks, its Ginger Spice, the Red Hair Draft. Tune in to find out if Al can save some blushes and finally get a win.
In Episode 33, we review In Search of Duncan Ferguson – The Life and Crimes of a Footballing Enigma by Alan Patullo.
The highest scoring Scot in the Premier League, Ferguson is a folk hero on the blue half of Merseyside. As well as Everton, Ferguson had stints of varying degrees of success and failure with Dundee United, Rangers, and Newcastle ...
Join us for our second installment of Injury Time, a prison 5-a-side draft.
The quality of players who have been to prison is really quite something, rich pickings indeed. Please do tune in to find out if Al can salvage some pride after his devastating loss in the previous draft.
Music by Darragh Fenlon.
In Episode 32, we take a history lesson with David Bolchover’s book about Béla Guttman, The Greatest Comeback – From Genocide to Football Glory. This is a remarkable and very tragic story, one that is as much about the treatment of Jews in Europe as about Guttman himself.
Béla Guttman played football for mostly Jewish teams in his native Hungary and then in Austria and the U...
Welcome to our first bonus episode - it's the Ademola Bookmen Podcast Injury Time [insert whistle sound here].
Today, Al and John are competing against each other to pick the best 5-a-side team of historic Irish Premier League players. Much less an idle barstool conversation, this discussion has an outcome. Yes, courtesy of cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technology, we can tell you whose team would have won.
Music by tha...
In Episode 31, we tackle the autobiography of famous Ruud Van Nistelrooy botherer Martin Keown. A member of The Invincibles, a double-double winner, and the owner of the most elbowed face in Premier League history, Keown played more than 300 times for Arsenal and 43 times for England.
In his 2024 book, Keown takes us through a career which brou...
Was Sócrates the coolest footballer ever?
Not only did he complete a medical degree while playing as a professional footballer, captain the Brazil national team, and found Corinthians Democracy, a movement which is credited with inspiring the people of Brazil to overthrow a military dictatorship, he did it all while looking like a stone cold co...
How do you follow a 5-time Ballon D’or winner? Well, with an 8-time Ballon D’or Winner of course. That’s right, its Part II of the Guillem Balague GOAT saga and our review of his biography of one Lionel Messi.
Originally published in 2013 but updated for the Argentina World Cup win in 2022, the book is a long one, covering the descent from heaven of the baby Messi to the u...
It’s our 28th episode and we are starting the new year with the first part of the Balague GOAT saga. First up is his award-winning biography of Cristiano Ronaldo.
This player certainly needs no introduction but if you insist then 5 Champions League wins, 5 Ballons D’or, and seven straight calendar years in which he scored more than 50 goals wil...
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