Product Description

Cascarino's own inside look at the life of a football star, which at times reads like a novel. He tells of his unhappy boyhood, his sexual indiscretions, how a lavish lifestyle can outstrip earnings, and takes readers through his 19-year career as a top footballer in England, France and Ireland.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103087 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Full Time: the Secret Life of Tony Cascarino is the most praised football autobiography in a very long time. Reviewers' jaws dropped at "the searing honesty ... and the breathless style" (The Saturday Times); The Observer Sport Monthly gasped "It's Angela's Ashes with half-time oranges ... a footballer's autobiography like no other. The most astonishing sports book of the year." "Autobiography" of course means ghost-written: though told in the first person it was put together by award-winning Irish journalist Paul Kimmage, whose Rough Ride won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award in 1990. Making the book compulsively readable Kimmage structured it brilliantly, guarding the series of secrets that Cascarino reveals so that the reader is tantalised by cryptic glimpses then made to wait until each revelation in turn is suddenly unveiled. What are these secrets? Suffice to say that some are personal, some professional, some minor and quirky, one major enough to generate heated debate in the press. At times the book reads like the confession of a man who's lived with too much guilt for too long.

Throughout, the book maintains a very high standard. It veers towards the blandness for which footballers' autobiographies are famous only when the author is discussing his friends, to whom he is commendably loyal. As for his managers, there are several memorable portraits. In the case of Jack Charlton it's open hero-worship, even when he felt hard done by. Relations with Glenn Hoddle were a very different story. "He was probably the unfunniest man I have ever known. He was also completely besotted with himself ... When you stepped offside with Glenn, there was nothing to do but accept your fate and hope that you returned in the next life as talented and as perfect as him."

The Guardian said, "Compared with the standard-issue footballer's autobiography, this is Tolstoy." Perhaps not quite, but it's brilliant storytelling, and gives a shockingly honest portrait of one footballer and his world. --David Pickering

Eamon Dunphy, The Times
If it were fiction this book could win the Booker Prize

Observer
An extraordinary book...Cascarino has something to say and having started talking has been brave and/or reckless enough not to stop

Customer Reviews

Honest to the point of masochism
As an Englishman living in France who has followed Tony Cascarino's career during his time here, even interviewing him once, I know first hand of the esteem the clubs and their supporters hold him in. Even during my short interview with him, his honesty and openess was very apparent, and as such, his book did not come as a surprise to me. What is more surprising is his openess about his 'private' life.
Footballers have previously told the 'truth' behind the glamour (see 'Left foot forward' by Garry Nelson), but this is possibly the first book by a footballer who looks out beyond the game. Football is really secondary in this book, and whole chunks of his career are dismissed in a few sentences. This book really would make a wonderful film.
Good luck Tony in whatever you are doing now, and come back to France soon!

flip side lifestyle of of a footballing hero
I first remember Tony Cascarino as goalscoring hero for surprise package Millwall in the 1988-89 footballing season. Forming a lethal partnership with Teddy Sheringham, myself and other schoolboys could only wonder at the life and times to be had as each saturday these players would get to live out the dream in the footballing arena.
Full time however offers a unique and fascinating insight into the less glamorous flip side to being a professional footballer.
The average run of the mill football book is painted with the usual hyperbole of the love for the game and exileration of pulling on your boots each afternoon.
Cascarino's canvas is more severe. what happens when your body can't take it anymore? what happens when all the abuse, the bad press and the pressure of being a million pound player convinces you you just aren't good enough? what happens when, like anyone else each morning, sometimes you just can't be bothered?
Since the dawn of the million pound footballer, there are many out there who won't remember Tony Cascarino, but it doesn't matter. There is enough here that convinces me this is an essential read for anyone who fears the future.

Another Football Autobiography ?
If that's what you want, you know the type where they drone on about how many goals they scored and that then DON'T buy this book. If you want a frightenly honest book, more about a man who is as falliable as you or I, but gets to act it out on a world stage then this is the book for you. I must have about 20-30 sports biographies and autobiographies and this is head and shoulders above the rest. A deeply honest book about a troubled childhood, an amazing footballing career and relationships which would test anyone. It is the sort of book which you cannot put down and will read again and again. I never supported any of the clubs Tony Cascarino played for, but he is someone I now deeply respect and would love to meet.