Phillip Vine
A floodlit football stadium at night, light beams cutting through the mist
Author & Sports Writer

Phillip
Vine

Football, politics and power — the spirit of the game in The Immortals and the architecture of ambition in The Visionary. Plus fiction, poetry and a writer's reading life.

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Front cover of The Immortals by Phillip Vine

The Immortals

Pitch Publishing · 2022

Celtic told through the men who wore the number nine — a history of the club's great centre-forwards and the stories that grew around them.

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Front cover of The Visionary by Phillip Vine

The Visionary

Pitch Publishing · 2019

Thirty years in the making: the never-before-told inside story of Michael Knighton's doomed attempt to buy Manchester United, the axis he forged with Alex Ferguson, and the financial blueprint the board used to build the club's unparalleled success.

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Phillip Vine

Ghostwriter, teacher, football club secretary — and, for the last decade, a writer full-time. Two books about football, politics and power, a resurrected body of poetry, and stories that demanded to be told.

  1. 1970s–80s

    Ghostwriter, north-west England

    A weekly newspaper column on football, its finances and its powerbrokers — written for other men's bylines.

  2. 1980s

    Teacher, Holyhead

    Chalk, rain and a godforsaken Catholic school on the Anglesey coast.

  3. 1990s

    Club secretary, Carlisle United

    Inside the Football League, fending off creditors and the bailiffs at the door.

  4. 2010s

    Writing full-time

    Poetry resurrected, short stories published on both sides of the Atlantic, awards and commendations.

  5. 2019

    The Visionary

    Michael Knighton, Manchester United and the revolution that money made.

  6. 2022

    The Immortals

    Celtic's Lisbon Lions, the nines and the other Celtic stories.

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