Author Description

Do you remember the Summer of 2018? That month when Gareth's Boys so nearly brought the FIFA World Cup home? With Kane and Trippier, a couple of Jordans, a concert of defending by Stones and Eric Dier, who wasn't. That was the summer when England came within a fraction of reaching the final, a waffle of coming third. Not since the days when everything that was good about football started with Bobby - Moore, Charlton, Robson, Williams (who used to run my cubs' team, what a guy) have things been so good. My daily blog of the trials, tribulations and triumphs of Gazza (Southgate not the Geordie one) and the boys caused the kind of ripple among the seas of social media that would, if boats could sail on Twitter and Facebook, have led to some serious capsizes. With my extensive list of contacts littered through the camps of world football's elite, I was able to bring readers of my twitter feed every story, every breaking scandal of this, the biggest sporting event in the world (apart from the Olympics, and perhaps the Super Bowl - no, it's bigger than the Super Bowl.) I was able to bring experience and an expert footballing brain, as coach of my own U11 side, to analyse the decisions of players and managers alike. Now those daily broadcasts are collected together, here, in this book. Buy it. You'd be mad to, I mean not to. Many people might think that the likes of Deschamps and Gazza (Southgate, not Lineker) know more about football than a South Coast journalist - well, read this book and judge for yourself. But our tome is not just about football, because early Summer 2018 represented a crucial time in my own life, a point at which, like my Beemer at a T Junction, things could have turned one way, or another. What would happen to my marriage with the amazing Jules? Where would the boys, Jarrod and future England international Young Ade, end up? Would they stay with their dad, or become step sons... but no, that is a story to be found within. AJ Rutherford's Russian Worl