On May 16, the world lost one of the finest football writers - Brian Glanville at the age 0f 93.

He was fearless, witty and hovered in the press box like Banquo’s ghost and who loved the sport but detested much about the modern game.

The joy of Glanville was, perversely, best experienced when he was at his most vitriolic. He loved football as few others could ever do, but he detested many things about the modern game, most vehemently commercialism and corruption, and let the world know it at every available opportunity.

What made up Glanville and for which he was known and loved was that he was fearless and feared. If that implies arrogance, so be it. But it was a price worth paying to hear and read the string of witticisms that lit up his work.

Glanville’s popular column “Kicking Around” which he wrote for about 30 years.

He had indeed tremendous witticism as when the Lobo-Solti match-fixing scandal of 1972-73 surfaced, he wrote a series of stories under the banner of The Year Of The Golden Fix. When colleague and longtime friend Michael Collett said to him: “Brian, I reckon you’ve made more from the scandal than they did from the fix itself,” he replied: “You’re too facking right I have.”

A prolific writer, Glanville wrote and spoke across several mediums – books, plays, occasional commentary, film and radio scripts – upsetting listeners in a 1950s BBC play about Hendon’s Jewish community in north London, where he had grown up. It did not seem to bother him. Brian was at his happiest when looking in from the outside.

Glanville’s sense of humour was indeed immense and as a scriptwriter, he left many pearls in the incomparable film of the 1966 World Cup, Goal! When his beloved Italy went out to North Korea – a shock on a par with Vesuvius, in his opinion – he put in the narrator’s mouth the memorable aside: “So Italy go home to their tomatoes.” He also wrote, acidly, of the North Koreans: “So little known, they might be flying in from outer space.”

The film, matchless for its sense of drama and sun-drenched nostalgia, gripped an audience that would celebrate England’s lone success at the highest level in the final. The campaign reached an ugly crescendo, however, in the foul-filled quarter-final win over Argentina. Glanville’s contribution was that “it is famous not just for Geoff Hurst’s controversial offside goal but the Argentines’ dirty tactics, which included spitting and kicking”. That unvarnished assessment came from Glanville’s rock-solid confidence in his own judgment. He would listen to an argument, but not often back down.

If Glanville listened to anyone, it was his enduring muse. Groucho Marx’s wit was never far from his lips or his pen and Brian delighted in borrowing from the great man’s litany of smartarsedness in conversation. One of his favourites, was Groucho’s quip after suffering some fools not-so-gladly: “I’ve had a particularly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”

He describes former Football Association chief Graham Kelly as a "wet fish", FIFA president Sepp Blatter and his predecessor João Havelange as "horrible people" and labels Manchester City's recent shopping spree as "repugnant".

Arguably the doyen of football writers, he has been described by legendary American journalist Paul Zimmerman as "the greatest football writer of all time".

Brought up in a secular home, Brian Glanville’s Dublin-born father - who Brian said was "very Jewish and very Irish" - had changed the family name from Goldberg to Glanville.

"My father was more religious than my mother, Florence," he recalled. "His Hebrew and Yiddish were good.

"I was bar mitzvah, although somewhat reluctantly because I found it boring, oppressive and tedious.

"The learning of it took up my school holidays, which I really didn't like."

A pupil at the prestigious boarding school Charterhouse, Brian said he could have "walked into Oxford or Cambridge", as was the status quo for Charterhouse pupils.

But he didn't want to go to university, and, even though he had a natural flair for modern languages, he pursued a career in law in London with Oppenheimer, Nathan and Van Dyke.

But writing remained his passion and he got into freelance journalism, first ghost-writing the autobiography of Cliff Bastin at the age of 17.

"I got out of law when I was 18," he remembered.

"I suppose I started writing on Bastin as an act of piety - but it was a labour of love.

But his biggest breakthrough career-wise was moving to Italy in 1952.

He recalled: "The continental experience was definitely a benefit.

"I had been rather depressed because I had contracted tuberculosis and had spent a few months in a convalescent home.

"I already had contacts in Italy because many of my stories had been translated into Italian for the newspaper Corriere Dello Sport."

Living in Rome and Florence, the mid-1950s were a boom time for English football managers in the Italian game.

Brian got to know many of them well, including the famed Jesse Carver, who enjoyed success at the likes of Juventus, Torino and Roma.

Ironically, his daughter Elizabeth has taught in Italy for the last 25 years.

Son Toby is a successful photographer, while other son Mark is a reformed football hooligan turned musician.

Returning to England, he joined The Times, covering various Olympic Games and writing his first book on the World Cup, with co-author Jerry Weinstein, in 1958.

His knowledge of the world game also led to Brian penning Soccer Around the Globe and The World Football Yearbook.

Brian also branched out of sports journalism, working as a writer on the satirical BBC programme That Was The Week That Was (where he wrote the song Bert the Inert about former FA boss Bert Mlilichip).

He also wrote the screenplay for the BAFTA-winning Goal!, the official film of the 1966 World Cup.

Brian has mixed with the great and good in the world of football, interviewing thousands of them.

But one of his proudest moments was meeting Germany captain Franz Beckenbauer at the 1974 World Cup.

'Der Kaiser' told Brian that his 1965 novel, The Rise of Gerry Logan, was the best book on football ever written.

But Brian is not one for platitudes and would much rather give his caustic opinion on various figures in the game.

He told me that the formation of the FA Premier League was a shocking idea.

"It is a very poor set up now, it is run by goons and it is depressing.

"There are the usual three teams that are likely to win it - Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal.

"There are far too many foreigners in the Premier League. Arsene Wenger said it doesn't bother him, but then he is not English.

"Money screams and what Manchester City are doing is repugnant. When Chelsea did it it was bad enough, but City are worse.

"There is a holiday in my heart when they lose.

An expert on the World Cup - he has been to 13 and has a certificate from FIFA to prove it - he is also scathing of world football's governing body.

Brian blasted: "The World Cup has become worse and worse over the years - it is bloated.

"Whatever Sepp Blatter thinks he knows is only secondary to the money he wants to make.

"Blatter has 50 new ideas a day and 51 of them are bad."

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