Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was a literary polymath best known as a colossus of football writing.

A uniquely authoritative and influential figure in the world of sports journalism, he was recognised everywhere, from Wembley to the Maracana stadium in Rio; that the 50 or so books he published included a number of highly regarded novels further set him apart.

As the Sunday Times’s football correspondent from 1958 to 1992, Glanville brought a loftiness, trenchancy and sophistication to coverage of the game that redefined the role and made him a legend among his peers. Football followers turned to Glanville’s pieces in the certainty of encountering forceful commentary, stylistic flair, unmatched insights, arresting exclusives, and, perhaps above all, a window on to the wider football world that no other writer offered.

While a certain insularity continued to beset English football culture during the Glanville years, he himself embraced the overseas game with a scholarly passion, educating the reader in its personalities and its dramas, as well as in tactical trends such as the Total Football deployed by the fabled Dutch team of the 1970s.

England’s failure to qualify for two successive World Cups – in 1974 and 1978 – in some ways played into Glanville’s hands, freeing him to cast his withering eye on the national team while highlighting the extent to which other countries were outpacing them. He was unimpresse​d by England’s celebrated run to the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup, believing it happened more through luck than judgement. Bobby Robson, the team’s manager, was “grotesquely overrated”.