Fascinating insight... highly recommended for fans, coaches and athletes in all sports. * Sir Clive Woodward, England World Cup-winning coach * Entertaining... splendid... masterful. Footballers of every nation should be reading this. * Sunday Times * The penalty shootout is like a lottery; you never know what can happen, though I know that there is an outstanding book, Twelve Yards, that proves otherwise. * Gérard Houllier * A wonderful book: extremely well-researched, well-written and international in its scope. Ben Lyttleton has done something very rare in football writing: he has got access to some of the game's leading players and coaches and got them to talk articulately and thoughtfully about a key aspect of their game. Twelve Yards reveals the level of intelligence that exists within professional football: a more cerebral zone than many people realize. * Simon Kuper, author of Football Against the Enemy and Why England Lose * The perfect palliative to ease the anxiety of footie fans, aficionados and players... With the aid of statistics, physics, psychology, body language and interviews with players, coaches and sports scientists, Lyttleton has advice and words of comfort, if not joy. * The Times * A vivid read... Lyttleton appears to have spoken to everybody who's ever taken part in a penalty shoot-out of any significance. As a result, he serves up an almost endless series of terrific set-pieces. * Reader's Digest * Brilliant... Twelve Yards is a book every England player should read. * Matt Le Tissier, former England international * Glorious... Lyttleton's book goes into remarkable detail in an attempt to find a solution, to do for England and penalties what Freud wanted to do for the human condition by transforming neurotic misery into normal human unhappiness. * Sunday Independent * Fascinating. * The Observer * Excellent. * Financial Times *
