The Wizard: The Life of Stanley Matthews

The first full and objective autobiography of a sports legend, revealing the professional and private lives of one of the world’s greatest ever footballers

"Stanley Matthews taught us the way football should be played."  —Pelé

"The Wizard" Stanley Matthews has achieved almost mythical status. For the first time, Jon Henderson digs beneath the public face of the "first gentleman of soccer" to explore the driving factors in his professional life and the private relationships that made the man. As a footballer Matthews was the first global superstar, guaranteed to increase ticket sales by thousands whenever he played. In a career spanning an incredible 33 years he won 84 caps for England and the FA Cup in 1953 ("The Matthews Final"), was knighted in 1965, and played professionally until he was 50. When he started out football was a working-class sport played for shillings. At the height of his career, before the abolition of the maximum wage, he earned just £20 a week. Henderson reflects on this footballing hero, recreating the magic on the pitch and analyzing the key moments that made him great. He looks too at his private life and the relationships that had the biggest impact on him and his career—with his professional boxer father in 1920s Stoke, the first wife who supported him throughout his career, and his much-criticized second marriage to the love of his life, a Czech with a shocking, never-before-told story of her own. This is a revealing insight into English football in the 20th century and a long overdue study of sports legend for a new generation of fans.