In a sports journalism career spanning five decades, Harry Harris built an enviable list of contacts which helped him to deliver countless scoops and win awards, including from the SJA; now, in his forthcoming new book, he will spill the beans and share secrets from the heart of football…
When I started out in journalism, there was no Google, no mobile, no email, no social media and certainly no WhatsApp.
If you wanted a story, you had to find somebody who knew something – and persuade them to tell you.
Your contacts were everything.
Mine eventually filled what became my ‘Black Book’: players, managers, chairmen, agents, administrators, lawyers and all manner of people operating around the edges of football. Some became friends. Others probably dreaded seeing my number appear on their phone.
That ‘Black Book’ helped sustain me through five decades of sports journalism and provided the inspiration for the title of my 100th football book, The Black Book: Secrets from the Heart of Football.
I was fortunate enough to work through what now seems like another world, that started with hot metal and actual typewriters!
As chief football writer of the Daily Mirror for more than 18 years, followed by eight at the Daily Express, and a couple more with ESPNSoccernet, I travelled the world chasing stories.
I covered five World Cups and watched the football media grow from a relatively small group of reporters who knew the players and managers personally into the enormous global industry it is today.
The methods changed. The essential ingredient didn’t.
People.
A telephone number was useful. Trust was priceless.
That was how I learned Roy Keane had walked out of the Republic of Ireland camp before the 2002 World Cup. It was how I discovered Newcastle United had appointed Ruud Gullit before Kenny Dalglish knew he had been sacked, and that Paul Merson was hooked on cocaine and booze.
It was how I found myself investigating people as formidable as Ken Bates, Terry Venables and ‘Big Sam’ Allardyce, and how I was invited to the homes of the good and the great, such as Lord Sugar.
Sometimes I wasn’t merely reporting events. I became a participant in them.
I persuaded Robert Maxwell to offer Johan Cruyff the job as Oxford United manager while I was in the room with them both. I interviewed Diego Maradona in the back seat of Osvaldo Ardiles’ car. George Best asked me to help him remember enough of his football career to write his final book.
There were arguments, threats of legal action, and occasions when people would have been delighted never to hear from me again.
There were also extraordinary friendships.
The photographs in The Black Book remind me how privileged I was to get so close to the people making football history. Pelé, Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles, Bobby Robson, Ruud Gullit, Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan, Sir Alex, Arsene and countless others were not images on a screen.
They were people you telephoned, met, questioned and occasionally annoyed.
Journalism is inevitably different now. A story can travel around the world before a reporter has finished making the second telephone call. Information is everywhere.
Yet information and journalism aren’t necessarily the same thing.
The best stories still come from asking the right question of the right person, and having that information to yourself – and knowing whether you can believe the answer.
Perhaps that is why I finally decided to write The Black Book.
For years, I kept many of these stories to myself. Some involved confidences that couldn’t be broken at the time. Others needed distance before they could properly be told.
Now, after five decades, I can tell them.
And I’ve still got the old, battered, original ‘Black Book.’
“460 pages, more than 170,000 words, with more than 200 full-colour pics!” Follow Harry on LinkedIn or Facebook for updates.
Further reading…
Harry Harris reveals landmark book published by Legacy 11 Books (August 2026)
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