League football 1888-1988

League football 1888-1988

In 17 April 1888, a group of men met at an old coaching inn in Manchester’s Piccadilly Their objective was simple. How could they save English professional football from dying, only three years after it had become officially recognised? William McGregor, a Birmingham shopkeeper who arranged the meeting, had an idea. Why not have regular fixtures with a set of teams playing each other home and away? Not everyone was convinced, but twelve clubs agreed to try it. Thus the Football League was born, the first of its kind in the world and soon to be copied by almost every nation and ever\- sport, in one form or another. There are books aplenty on the great games and the great football teams of the last 100 years, but never before has the history of the Football League itself been told in such depth. This is the story of powerful men: some of them dictators, some of them charmers, all of them determined. Twelve presidents, five secretaries and dozens of committeemen have argued, battled and campaigned for the League, often in the face of enormous criticism, internal divisions, financial crises and human tragedies. Simon Inglis introduces us to them all; the wil}; the obsessive, the puritan, the joker and the hero, weaving their deeds into a century-long tapestry of fascinating achievement and intrigue. This is the story of the Football League, but it is also the story of the men who made it.