Across several episodes, Tom Williams promoted the title as a fresh, accessible look at the last 40‑45 years of French football, noting its recent release and availability from major booksellers. The hosts highlighted its engaging narrative that covers the national team’s evolution, key clubs and players, and even an open‑ended chapter on PSG, while mentioning its rising sales on Amazon. The discussion positioned the book as a recommended read for anyone interested in modern French football history.
Episode: Yamal fires Spain to the final - can England join...
Tom Williams literally wrote the book about France and the structure of French football. It is out right now.
va va voom it's out right now.
Episode: Ancelotti leads Real to another Champions League t...
Tom Williams discussed his book about the modern history of French football. He said it was available to buy from all good booksellers.
It's about the modern history of French football and it's available to buy now from all good booksellers.
Episode: Lookman downs Leverkusen, Chelsea’s manager search...
The book is about French football.
It does feel like a cruel question but Tom Williams is grinning as the author of the celebrated book Va-va-voom about French football.
Episode: Sancho shines in the Champions League, plus the ne...
Tom Williams talked about this book on the podcast with Macintosh and has an extract on theathletic.com.
If I have our boom a modern history of French football zooming its way up the best-sellers charts, Brackett's Football Category, I'll notice this morning.
Hello Matt, yes, yes, Brackett's Football Category.
Brackett's European Football Leagues.
It's doing well in that on Amazon but it's not quite on the top yet.
If you haven't listened to Tom talking to me and Macintosh all about the book, have a look on your podcast feed, it's probably somewhere there just below this one.
There's also an extract on theathletic.com today.
There is indeed the Marseille chapter.
And you might well have to add another chapter if PSG win the Champions League this season.
I mean you it would mean a second edition and probably more money and that's no bad thing I mean my one regret at the moment is that the PSG chapter is about you know the modern PSG era and I had to leave it as open-ended as possible because I knew it was going to come out you know end of April and I didn't know when you know we sort of finally sent it to the printers like what PSG were we're going to achieve so I've kind of you know kind of fudged it as best as possible.
Episode: Va-Va Voom! Tom Williams talks modern French foot...
The book covers the past 40-45 years of French football, detailing the evolution of the national team, its style of play, and the exploits of great teams and players during this modern era. It also explores the impact of French players and coaches around Europe.
So yeah, Vavavuum, the modern history of French football does pretty much what it says on the tin in that it recounts the last sort of 40-45 years in the history of French football.
It's a nice loose read as well, you get some history books which are very almost prescriptive in the way that they tell them. In 1961 this happened, in 1962 there's none of that here.
I mean I think my initial idea when it came to writing a book about French football history was that you'd have to write about the whole thing, you'd have to go back to the late 19th century and explain how everything came together and ultimately had a conversation with my literary agent Melanie and she suggested that why don't you just start in the early 80s?
So I mean Giroud is renowned above all for being a disciplinarian and some of the stories about him are ridiculous and one of the things that he told me about was how in the 60s when he was trying to keep tabs on his players he would check the the mileage is on the dashboards of their cars to see whether there were any kind of great fluctuations and he also knew that there was a very popular local orchestra that the players liked to go and see you know when they were playing at local dances and he would calculate the mileage between where the player you know where the player lived where he parked his car and where the most recent dance was and then we then go back the following morning and if there was say you know 127 kilometers on the clock he you know quickly made the calculation that was you know whatever is there and back and so he you know he basically basically caught them.
There's a chapter in the book dedicated to the the British and Irish players who went over to France in the late 80s and the early 90s and he was yeah quite comfortably the most successful and such an extraordinary thing to stand out in that team where you've got a Betty Palais who arguably the best player Africa's produced at that point Jean-Pierre Pappin who I don't want to say this and sound me but not the most technically brilliant striker but worked so hard and became Europe's most potent striker you've got Basil Bully at the back as this absolute warrior they should be the biggest team in Europe for the next five years they're not as you said earlier it all comes falling down very quickly yeah.