Tony Cascarino and the art of making the most of what you got

"You asked if I'd be anyone from history fact or fiction, dead or alive. I said I'd be Tony Cascarino, circa 1995."

That's the chorus line from All Your Kayfabe Friends by Welsh band Los Campesinos. It's not the most memorable song in the world and the band itself didn't make too much of a lasting impression. But what a line. And what a tribute to the player himself.

We recently reviewed his genre defining autobiography Full Time on the Ademola Bookmen Podcast.

In preparation for the episode, I watched quite a bit of footage of Tony. And that did leave a lasting impression. He wasn't really any good, was he? In fact, when you think about it, Cascarino is maybe the player in all of football who has constructed the biggest profile from the most modest set of skills.

Cascarino was 19 when he did his last purple rinse and decided to forego his career in hairdressing for a crack at full-time football. It is easy to forget now that he spent his first six years at Gillingham and while he did well there and later at Millwall, the times he spent higher up in the football pyramid at Chelsea, Celtic and Aston Villa were all a bust.

Were it not for the fact that in 1994, Bernard Tapie's Marseilles were subject to a transfer ban which meant they could only get players on free transfers, Cascarino would probably have ended up back in Millwall or Gillingham, to finish out a respectable but hardly earth shattering career.

But Tony was always fortunate. Fortunate and crafty.

He dyed his hair, doctored his passport with a pen to make him a year younger than he actually was and jetted off to France where he enjoyed a very memorable end to his career, earning the nickname Tony Goal.

But it's in the green of Ireland that Tony will be best remembered. He says in the book that he wasn't qualified to play for Ireland. But as always with Tony, there was a bit of tradecraft involved in this too. There was no biological link between Tony and adoptive Irish grandfather but the link was enough to get him an Irish passport.

But it made for a great headline and, as outlined in the book, it was what convinced Paul Kimmage to ghostwrite it in the first place.

And the reader should be happy that it did, because it really is an excellent book. It is also a fitting reflection of Tony's career, managing to squeeze an awful lot of his life – a book that is so much better than books by many much better players.

When it was published in 2000 it set a new high-water mark for footballers' autobiographies. Its forthright depiction of Tony's struggles with his inner demons and his wandering eyes gave us a book that is as much about the end of his first marriage as it is about his football career.

In the year that we have been reviewing football autobiographies on the podcast, we have read some real stinkers, but Tony's left a lasting impression, much more than his football ever did.

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