The Footie Fool

20 Premier League players were asked to take part in Premier League Reading Stars an educational project, which harnesses the motivational power of football to encourage families to enjoy reading, and I have to say I am impressed with some of the choices made by players (or their astute media handlers).

In amongst the obvious choices like John Foster’s Fantastic Football Poems (Blackburn’s Brad Friedel), Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse (Reading’s Marcus Hahnemann) and other sport references (Manchester City’s Nedum Onuoha picked It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong) there are a few surprises.

Arsenal’s Jens Lehmann picked The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a fantastic book set in Afghanistan who’s main character returns home to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy’s parents are shot during the Taliban takeover in the mid ’90s.

Portsmouth’s David James also has a great pick: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a book who’s main character is autistic.

Hmmm, I notice no copies of Wayne Rooney by Wayne Rooney, Totally Frank: The Autobiography of Frank Lampard by Frank Lampard or My Defence by Ashley Cole on anyone’s list?

I’ll let you divine what you will out of the fact that, out of the 20 Premiership players below, the book choice I can relate to most right now is The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, selected by Arjan De Zeeuw at Wigan. How can you tell the most reading I do these days is at night to a 3 year old?