Michael Calvin

Michael Calvin

Michael Calvin was born on August 3rd, 1957 and is currently 69 years old. Michael Calvin was born in Hertfordshire, England.

Michael Calvin is a writer and journalist.

During his 12 year run as Chief Sportswriter on The Daily Telegraph, he established a global reputation. He held similar positions at Mail on Sunday and The Times, and is a columnist for the Sunday Mirror.

Twice Michael’s been named Sportswriter of the Year, twice been named Sports Reporter of the Year and been honored at the British Press awards six other times. Michael won the Sports Journalists’ Association Sports Writer of the Year prize in 1992 and won British Sports Book Award in consecutive years with The Nowhere Men and Proud.

He took a 4 year long sabbatical from journalism in order to help out and run the English Institute of Sport, which provides strategic support to 35 Olympic sports.

The Nowhere Men: The Unknown Story of Football’s True Talent Spotters is the winner of The Times British Sports Book Award for 2014 and is a fascinating insight into the enclosed world of football scouts in the UK.

One teen boy plays football in this suburban park, and his name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made that somebody should get down there quick, it’s something special.

Another boy is Jack Wilshere, 8 going on 28. The referee, who’s an Arsenal scout, spirits him away from Luton Town.

This young goalkeeper struggles on loan at Cheltenham Town in League Two. He’s Jack Butland. Within mere months he’ll be playing for England.

This is football’s hidden tribe. Scouts are everywhere yet nowhere, nameless and faceless, despite making the informed choices worth millions. Michael opens up this hidden world of theirs, examining their disconnected lifestyles, petty betrayals, and unconsidered professionalism of men that spend long and lonely hours on the road.

For Family: Life, Death, and Football: A Year on the Frontline with a Proper Club, Michael followed lower league UK soccer team Millwall FC through one emotional promotion season.

There for their first day of training, he was on the substitutes’ bench at Wembley some 333 days later. In an environment that is less than glamorous, he vividly depicts management and players as family men, and close to their roots.

Whose Game Is It Anyway?: Football, Life, Love & Loss examines football being incredibly distant from its fans. Many became alienated by the shameless self-interest and greed of the Premier League, and nobody is able to predict how the global game would look after the pandemic.

In this book, Michael searches for any reason to believe. Written during the COVID-19 crisis, the book’s a thought provoking, deeply personal account of the role that sport, especially football, plays in everyday life. Part manifesto, part memoir, it takes the reader on a tour of the world’s greatest sporting occasions and into its outposts in sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazon Basin and the Southern Ocean.

Michael Calvin: Awards & Accolades

Calvin's book, The Survivor was nominated for the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, Best Nonfiction Crime Book, in 2024.

Related Authors

Readers who follow Michael Calvin also follow these authors:

1. Stephen King, author of The Dark Tower Series.
2. Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series.
3. J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings Series.
4. John Steinbeck, author of: Of Mice and Men.
5. Neil Gaiman, author of the American Gods Series.

Michael Calvin: F.A.Q