Being well-read has never been a requirement for becoming a footballer. But when 20 Premier League players were invited to suggest books to encourage reading, a high-minded goalkeeper put forward The Iliad to go alongside other players’ suggestions of Pele: The Autobiography and the Harry Potter series.
Robert Green, West Ham’s goalie, nominated Homer’s Trojan War epic for the Football Foundation’s Reading Stars book list. Another goalie, Hull City’s Boaz Myhill, went for William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
In fact, keepers seem to be football’s intellectual elite. While Wayne Rooney plumped for perennial favourite Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Paul Robinson, who wears the gloves for Blackburn Rovers, chose The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma.
