Watford Forever
How Graham Taylor and Elton John Saved a Football Club, a Town and Each Other
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
The unforgettable story, decades before Ted Lasso, of the real-life Watford Football Team, transformed into a powerhouse by coach Graham Taylor and owner Elton John.
Nothing has brought English soccer more immediately into the American mainstream than Ted Lasso, which captivated the nation in thirty-four episodes over three seasons. But before there was Jason Sudeikis’s lovable and, at first, hapless AFC Richmond, there was Watford Football Club, a team from the outskirts of London with barely enough fans to fill its stands—and which, in the mid-1970s, was languishing in 92nd place at the bottom of the last division of the English Football League. That is, until rock superstar Elton John—who, with his dad, had followed the team as a boy—bought the lowly franchise and, with legendary manager Graham Taylor, transformed the luckless football club into a top-seeded Premier League team. Inspiring, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking, Watford Forever recalls the improbably tender relationship between Elton John and Taylor, a straight-talking former fullback, who together beat the odds and their personal demons to save a club and a struggling community.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In 1976, Elton John was the one of the world’s biggest rock stars. He was also a lifelong fan of his local Northwest London team Watford FC, at the time the lowest-ranked squad in English football. So he bought the club and, as chairman, hired a new manager, ex-player Graham Taylor. Over the next decade, this unlikely duo—flamboyant gay rocker and straitlaced family man—took their team from worst to…well, almost first. Watford Forever is a fascinating and unexpectedly inspiring history. At a time when drunken antisocial hooliganism was the ugly face of English football, Watford installed a stand expressly so that women and children could safely watch the matches. Speaking of drunkenness, Elton credits a stern talking-to from Taylor with starting him on the path to sobriety in the early ’80s. Even if soccer isn’t your bag, stories like these, plus plenty of on-the-pitch drama, make this read a treat.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Elton John granted journalist Preston (Fall) access to his personal archives for this stirring chronicle of how the musician turned the Watford Football Club's fortunes around after buying the team in 1976. Watford was languishing in the Fourth Division at the time, but John used his deep pockets to hire up-and-coming manager Graham Taylor. A buttoned-up traditionalist who didn't care for rock music, Taylor appeared to be John's polar opposite, but the two developed a close friendship grounded in their shared conviction that soccer should be above all entertaining. This led Taylor to favor an aggressive style of play that pushed Watford to "attack the whole time... running the opposition ragged and harrying them into making mistakes." By 1982, the club had fought their way to the First Division, where they remained until Taylor left in 1987. Feeling that "things just weren't the same," John sold Watford by the end of the year. Preston skillfully spins Watford's ascent into a rousing underdog story, and his access to John reveals a more intimate side of the pop star (John recalls envying Taylor's domestic life, which was more stable than his turbulent upbringing or his globe-trotting adulthood). This will have readers cheering.
