Soccer books of the year: A striking Swede superhero and the search for the real Dunphy

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not the player of the decade, but he's not far off. For any given rival, Zlatan can say he's either won more league titles, or scored more spectacular goals than they have. In the event of a tie, he can say that he's definitely done a better autobiography. I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic is the true story of a lonely, vulnerable kid who happens to be a superhero. It describes how he rose out of the Rosengård ghetto to become Sweden's uncrowned king.

The book is one of the best things Zlatan has ever done because it showed the world he has a sense of irony after all. Before he was generally recognised as one of the best players of his era, he was famous for his heroic boasts – “What John Carew can do with a football, Zlatan can do with an orange” etc. Such peacocking was anathema to the Swedish ethic of modesty and self-effacement, and it took his countrymen – and much of the wider world – a while to appreciate the sly self-awareness of his act.

A lot of the time, Zlatan was trying to convince himself. As a poor immigrant kid in Malmö, he felt looked down on by rich, snobby Swedes. His heroes were international: Bruce Lee, Ronaldo, and Muhammad Ali. “Ali did things his own way, no matter what people said. He didn’t make excuses, and I’ve never forgotten that . . . That’s the way I wanted to be, and I imitated some of his things, like ‘I am the greatest!’”

Ali himself adapted the “I am the greatest” persona from the wrestler Gorgeous George, who told the young boxer: “A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.” Zlatan figured that out for himself early.

Pantomime arrogance was also his way of putting pressure on himself, of forcing himself to live up to his own legend. When he signed for Milan in 2010, he promised they would win the league despite not having done so in seven years: “Some sportsmen, like Ali, kept their promises, and I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to talk the talk and walk the walk.”

They did, with Zlatan finishing as top scorer, and in the literary sense too, he has delivered.

The Sports Gene
David Epstein's survey of how athletic performance is influenced by genetics is not strictly a football book, but The Sports Gene probably the most important sports book published this year.

Epstein tackles big and sometimes controversial questions, like: why is every racing distance from the 100 metres to the marathon dominated by athletes of African ancestry?

He tours the world in search of answers, and the result is sometimes reminiscent of Jared Diamond's 1997 classic Guns, Germs and Steel, which argued that the differing pace of economic and technological advancement in various societies could largely be explained by the differing environmental conditions in which those societies had developed.

Along the way, Epstein demolishes the notion – popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's mega-seller Outliers – that outstanding performance is essentially a matter of 10,000 hours of practice. His study of recent advances in the understanding of genetics leads him towards even bigger questions. We already accept that every physical attribute is governed by combinations of genes.

Epstein finds that qualities we’ve always thought of as attributes of character - determination, motivation, work ethic - may also be dependent on genetic make-up.

Eamon Dunphy
In a Sunday Independent interview, Paul Kimmage suggested that The Rocky Road might have been better if it had more Eamon Dunphy and less Eamon de Valera. Dunphy replied that he wanted to respect the privacy of his family.

Maybe when so much of your life is lived in public, it becomes more important to keep something back for yourself.

And what if there isn’t one Real Eamon Dunphy, but several?

His protean nature has been key to his success. Who else would have felt equally at home pronouncing on affairs of state, and using the Telestrator to trace out the arc of Frank Rijkaard’s phlegm onto Rudi Völler’s mullet?

He made his name as a dealer in harsh truths, but part of you is always wondering: is he winding us up?

At the Sunday Tribune, Colm Tóibín would read Dunphy's copy and say: "You don't really believe this stuff, do you?" At the time Dunphy insisted he did, but as he admits here, he's changed his mind about a lot of things.

So The Rocky Road is no "searingly honest confession". Instead it's a sprawling, vivid, acidly funny depiction of two professional worlds: English and Irish football in the 1960s and '70s, and Dublin journalism in the 1970s and ' 80s. He explores dilemmas that confront journalists in sport and every other field.

How do you separate the personal and the professional?

Where do you draw the line between deserved criticism and a hatchet job?

How do you balance the need to cultivate sources against the duty to say what you know?

Is it a choice between knowing without saying, or saying without knowing?

There's also some powerful writing, including a sorrowful yet utterly unsentimental sketch of George Best in decline.

Honourable mentions
Fear and Loathing in La Liga:
Sid Lowe one of the sharpest writers in football on the most glamorous rivalry in the game.

Stillness and Speed: Dennis Bergkamp (with David Winner and Jaap Visser) a stylish and reflective memoir from Arsenal's best-ever player

Red or Dead: David Peace said he expected most people would hate his novel about Bill Shankly. Judging by the reviews, he was right. Which was unfortunate, because it was excellent.

Turkey of the year: Fergie time is over
Alex Ferguson is always talking about how he's "mellowed" with age and he has probably repeated the word so often that he has forgotten its meaning. In fact, what seems to have happened with Ferguson is that somewhere along the line, probably when his team won a second Champions League title in 2008, he passed an invisible tipping point. He had been so successful for so long that he had transcended football management and become an unassailable exemplar of British greatness, like Lord Nelson or the Spitfire. With everyone sucking up to him all the time, opportunities to get angry became scarce, and after a while even he began to believe that he had grown into a sweet old man.

This book shows his rancourous side is still intact. It’s surprising that a man of Ferguson’s age and achievement still can’t find it within himself to be more magnanimous to players like Roy Keane, David Beckham and Van Nistelrooy, but that’s Ferguson: nobody would ever mix him up with Nelson Mandela.

Maybe you could accept Ferguson’s sourness if he had produced a better book.

This is rambling, trite, and strewn with the sort of minor errors that suggest the haste to get it to market overrode any concerns about the content. It compares poorly to the depth, passion and insight of Ferguson’s previous autobiography, Managing My Life, last updated in 2000, and still the best account of his career.