Your latest book, Iconic Football Grounds, traverses the iconic stadiums where football history was – and continues to be – made. Please could you tell us more about the book and how the idea came to you?

The book features 94 football grounds and stadiums across the globe. That includes Sandygate in Sheffield, the world’s oldest football ground, as well as Hackney Marshes, which is often described as the spiritual home of Sunday league football, right through to modern megastructures such as SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Sports Park.

What they all have in common is that they are ‘stadiums where history was made’, and that is a great theme to work from because history can be all manner of things, from a record-breaking event to a revolution. To give one example, Berlin’s Olympiastadion staged the 1936 Olympics, otherwise known as Hitler’s Olympics, but is also where Zinedine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final.

The idea came about because I’d written a piece about Werner Seelenbinder, a wrestler who defied the Nazis, became a folk hero in what used to be East Germany, and a tower built to honour his memory still stands outside RB Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena. Then I watched Stasi FC, a documentary about how the East German secret service helped ensure that the same team won the league title ten years in a row. Fans would turn up to matches and turn their backs on the game in protest.

I originally wanted to do an updated version of Remarkable Football Grounds, a book I wrote in 2022, but then thought it would be great to do another illustrated book that had loads of fantastic images, but could bring together fascinating stories like the ones in East Germany and put a greater emphasis on storytelling when it comes to the words.

Then the idea of ‘stadiums where history was made’ came out of a conversation with Quarto about what the theme should be for a book about grounds that hadn’t been done before.

Please could you tell us a little about how you came to write Iconic Football Grounds?

I’d previously authored two books – Remarkable Football Grounds and Remarkable Rugby Grounds – and I’ve been writing about sports for over 30 years. In fact, the first article I ever had published was in the first issue of FourFourTwo magazine way back in June 1994, and it was about Leyton Orient’s plans to redevelop their ground.

Then, 20 years later, I did another piece for FourFourTwo about the most outlandish ideas for stadiums that never happened and, in some cases, those projects and ridiculous ideas had a fascinating backstory.

In the 20 years between writing those two stories, I was lucky enough to go to stadiums and see matches in different countries around the world, partly through work but also as a fan. That included Liverpool winning the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul.

Remarkable Football Grounds came about by chance, and writing it was a brilliant experience, which I was extremely keen to do again, but with a fresh angle and a whole load of grounds that I didn’t cover in that first book.

As a sports follower yourself, who would enjoy reading Iconic Football Grounds?

Football fans of any age will enjoy it. Those stories are accompanied by fantastic images of each ground. The pictures serve as the entry point for the book, and then you delve into the stories, many of which cover key moments in the history of both men’s and women’s football.

Hopefully, it will solve a problem for anyone trying to figure out what to get somebody for Christmas who loves football!

Please could you tell us one memorable fact or anecdote that stood out to you when writing the book?

There are all sorts of incredible events which I delved into in more detail during the process of writing the book, including two of football’s greatest underdog victories – Iraq in the 2007 Asian Cup final at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Indonesia and Zambia winning the 2012 AFCON at Gabon’s Stade d’Angondjé.

But from a personal perspective, my first job was as a sports reporter for a group of local papers in west London, so I got to write about Chelsea, Fulham and Queens Park Rangers. My favourite story from that time was about Dennis Bailey, a Fulham supporter who took on Cabra Estates, a property developer that wanted to merge Fulham and QPR, bulldoze Craven Cottage and replace the ground with a load of luxury apartments.

Some years later, it came to light that Dennis was the man who successfully applied for the Stevenage Road Stand (now the Johnny Haynes Stand) and the Cottage to be granted listed status, which means they are protected landmarks. The story is mentioned in Remarkable Football Grounds, but I had to rely on my notes because I thought I’d lost the original recording.

Over the Christmas holidays, I was doing a clearout and found the memory stick which had the interview with Dennis. But when I played it on my laptop, it kept stopping after ten minutes because the file was partially corrupted. So I gave it to my brother, whose laptop is much better than mine, and he retrieved around 90 per cent of that recording. 

And the story was much better than I originally remembered, and it contains this wonderful quote from Dennis:

'Towards the end, it became quite exciting and I enjoyed the battle. I turned up to a Cabra shareholders’ meeting and said, ‘Did you know one of your shareholders has got the Stevenage Road Stand listed?’ They said, ‘Yes, but we don’t know why.’ ‘My reply was, ‘Because some things are more important than money.’

From Wembley to Azadi, the book includes a truly global collection of football stadiums. Which are your personal favourites?

Often it’s the matches rather than the stadium that make it a personal favourite. I love the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, partly because of its location. It’s in the city centre, you’ve got Cardiff Castle virtually next door and there are loads of pubs and bars right near the stadium. But also, I saw Liverpool play there in four cup finals and they won every match. Although it only gets a passing mention in the book, St James’ Park in Newcastle ticks the boxes for location and atmosphere.

While a lot of new stadiums might be very impressive from a visual or structural perspective, they sometimes lack a focal point for the home support, which is why Borussia Dortmund’s stadium, which I first went to for the UEFA Cup final in 2001, is another favourite.

From a writer’s perspective, the story behind the Mmabatho Stadium in South Africa covers apartheid, politics, corruption, a KGB spy, a contract killing and a contender for the world’s worst-designed stadium.

The events that have taken place at the Azadi and Cairo International stadiums help to tell a far bigger story – one involving women campaigning for the right to attend a football match and the other providing a focal point for protests during the events that ultimately brought down the Egyptian government.

Previously, you have written about Remarkable Rugby Grounds and Remarkable Football Grounds. What is it that you love about the sports and their stadiums?

There’s an old expression, ‘if these walls could talk’, and every stadium or ground that I’ve written about has a great story to tell.

Also, I can spend all day looking at shots of grounds and stadiums and how they fit into their surrounding landscape. Of all the images in the book, one of my favourites is Hackney Marshes, with row after row of pitches with the London skyline as the backdrop, as well as the Spituk Stadium in India, in a cold desert. The aerial picture was taken from a military airplane.

Aside from yours (obviously!), do you have any other favourite books that you would recommend to people who have enjoyed Iconic Football Grounds?

If you love the format of this book and love sports, then I would recommend Golf: The Iconic Courses. I’m also reading Passion Is a Fashion, a fantastic book about The Clash by Pat Gilbert.

And, finally, what new projects do you have on the horizon that we can look forward to?

There are loads more grounds and stadiums that we weren’t able to feature in this book, but I’m looking at how to bring them together. Just when you think you’ve seen every incredible place that has a football pitch, somebody will send me a message saying, ‘Put this one in your next book.’

Away from grounds, I’m currently writing a feature on the making of a new film about Jonah Lomu for Rugby Journal magazine.