David Conn


David Conn is a journalist for The Guardian
He attended Bury Grammar School before studying English Literature & Politics at the University of York.
He has written four books, The Football Business: Fair Game in the '90s?, The Beautiful Game?: Searching the Soul of Football and Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football and Growing Up. Those three focus on the influence of money on modern day English football. His fourth, published in June 2017, is The Fall of the House of Fifa, which charts the corruption endemic at football's world governing body, in the context of Fifa's history and stated purpose to be a force for good in the world.
He also ghost-wrote the autobiographies of the 100m hurdles world record holder Colin Jackson and former Manchester United player Lee Sharpe.
Conn has been named sports news reporter of the year three times, in 2004, 2009 and 2013, by the Sports Journalists Association, and has been named Football Writer of the Year by the Football Supporters Federation three times, in 2002, 2005 and 2009. In December 2013 he was named Sports Journalist of the Year in the Press Gazette British Journalism Awards. The judges said: "He delves beyond the glitzy veneer of modern football to hold the game’s gilded elite to account."
His 2009 article for the Guardian detailing the bereaved Hillsborough families' continuing campaign for justice prompted the then Labour ministers Andy Burnham and Maria Eagle to press for all official documents relating to the disaster to be released.
In 2012 Conn was named among the top 10 most influential sportswriters in Britain by the trade publication, UK Press Gazette.
He is a supporter of Manchester City F.C..
In 2011 he presented a BBC documentary that looked into the ownership issues of Leeds United.