Not For Me, Clive: Stories From the Voice of Football

A moving and beautifully-written love letter to football and its people from one of the sport's most eminent voices. An intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive book about how football casts its spell on us all.

'Clive Tyldesley's brilliant, emotive commentaries became the soundtrack to matches that will stay with the fans for the rest of their lives.' Oliver Holt, Mail on Sunday

Football changes everything. It changes how we feel, how we think, how we behave. It turns you into someone else.

You love your team first. It's tribal. Except I did love something else. I loved the idea of commentating on my team, on every team. I loved it even more than Manchester United. I ditched the girl next door for the diva on the silver screen.

It was a crush. Like all true romances, it was irrational and intoxicating, it was tangled and foolish, it became addictive and occasionally heart-breaking and it kept on changing.

Two United goals inside two minutes changed it in 1999. A teenage Evertonian called Rooney did his bit in 2002. Three Liverpool goals in less than six minutes changed it again in 2005. Hello hello.

Moments. Mere blinks of wide eyes. Football happens in heartbeats. Meeting those moments is my job. Seeing them, saying them, spelling out the difference they have just made. It's all I've ever wanted to do. Probably all I can do.

The best part of the job is doing it. The ultimate workplace is one that you want to go to every day. The second best part of the job is the extraordinary people that I spend my working life with.

Spending time in the company of the 'greats' of football like Sir Alex Ferguson, Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Sir Kenny Dalglish has changed everything for me, and probably for you too...