The man in the middle - David Elleray

As a schoolboy in Dover, David Elleray's ambition was to referee at the football World Cup finals: at the age of 13 he started on that road by becoming the youngest person ever to referee in an official capacity. Now one of the most recognisable figures in football, he retires from full-time refereeing at the end of the present season. The last of the amateur refs in the top-flight and no stranger to controversy, he is a household name to readers of both tabloids and broadsheets and without a doubt the highest profile British referee in the world game.

This highly entertaining and revealing memoir tells of his involvement at the highest level of the national and international game over four decades. Intelligent and insightful, it is a story of ambition, achievement and incident covering a career that has taken him all over the world from Yeltsin's Kremlin to the biggest match in Brazilian domestic football, to Wembley Cup Finals, to on and off-field confrontations with some of the game's biggest names (Roy Keane, Vinnie Jones), to death threats and police protection.