Soccer History

As Britain takes its first steps outside EU jurisdiction, how will football clubs adjust? With the FA keen on tournament success, the FA Youth Cup will play a key role in bringing academy products to prominence. Since 1952, the trophy changed hands every season bar one, with the likes of Crystal Palace, Millwall, Leeds United, and Manchester City lighting up the tournament with superstar teams. From Kids to Champions tells the stories of players who didn't make it at the top level, or left the game disillusioned, along with those of the important coaches and academy directors.

In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport - now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself. 

Real Madrid is the most successful sports team on the planet. The soccer club has more trophies than any other sports team, including 11 UEFA Champions League trophies. However, the story behind the triumph goes beyond the players and coaches. Generally unnoticed, a management team consisting mostly of outsiders took the team from near bankruptcy to the most valuable sports organization in the world. How did Real Madrid achieve such extraordinary success? Columbia Business School adjunct professor Steven G. Mandis investigates.

The 2016/17 season marked the 25th of the Premier League. This book recognises that fact in a way which is factually accurate yet dismissive of reputations and hype. It recognises the achievements of Swindon and Barnsley as much as Manchester United and Chelsea and sneaks in references to borg drones from Star Trek, Oscar Wilde, Nirvana and Red Dwarf alongside analysis of the songs and seasons. Notts County fan Billy Ivory's foreword sets a tone of bitter irony as the story (shocked back to life by Leicester City) is told in unconventional fashion.

Before agents and TV mega-rights ushered in multi-millionaire players, footballers’ wages were capped, with even the game's biggest names earning barely more than a plumber or electrician. Footballing legends shared a bond of borderline penury with the crowds they entertained on Saturday afternoons, on pitches that were far away from the pristine lawns of the modern era. Instead of the sports cars driven by today's top players, the stars of yesteryear travelled to matches on public transport and returned to homes as modest as those of their supporters.

Each November, about a hundred people with paper poppies pinned to their coats gather around a memorial in Edinburgh. They're there to commemorate the more than a dozen members of the local football team, Heart of Midlothian - almost every member of its starting lineup and many of its backup players - who went to war. A Bigger Field Awaits Us tells the little-known but poignant story of a group of Scottish athletes and their fans who went to war together - and the stories of the few who made it home. 

In Inverting the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson pulls apart the finer details of the world's game, tracing the global history of tactics, from modern pioneers right back to the beginning when chaos reigned. Along the way, he looks at the lives of great players and thinkers who shaped the sport and probes why the English, in particular, have 'proved themselves unwilling to grapple with the abstract'.

In this fascinating and exhaustively researched book, the first of its kind in the English language, Tom Williams brings to life French football’s chequered coming of age over the last 40 years. Featuring exclusive interviews with great figures of the French game such as Alain Giresse, Jean-Pierre Papin, Emmanuel Petit and Blaise Matuidi, and with a cast of characters that also includes Michel Platini, Thierry Henry, Karim Benzema, Chris Waddle and Lionel Messi, it's a book no football fan will want to miss.

Anfield, May 26th 1989. The final day of the Division One season. The rest of football stopped to watch as perennial champions Liverpool took on rank outsiders Arsenal in a head-to-head contest for the title. With the Gunners leading 1-0 but needing another goal to take the title, it was, in the words of commentator Brian Moore, ‘up for grabs now…’ Set against the backdrop of rgw Hillsborough disaster, and during an emotional era in football, 89 is an oral history of a sporting moment so unusual it felt instantly historic. 

In his latest book, bestselling author Cass Pennant takes an engaging and unparalleled look at some of the most volatile and violent scenes of fans following their football clubs to have unfolded over the past five decades, and examines the lengths to which many will go to put one over their local rivals. Here is history that also examines everything from the changing face of football violence, to who gets involved—and why.

Manchester, 2018: Pep Guardiola and José Mourinho lead their teams out to face each other in the 175th Manchester derby. They are first and second in the Premier League, but today only one man can come out on top. It is merely the latest instalment in a rivalry that has contested titles, traded insults and crossed a continent but which can be traced back to a friendship that began almost 25 years ago.

Once upon a time football was run by modest local businessmen. Today it is the plaything of billionaire oligarchs, staggeringly wealthy from oil and gas, from royalty, or from murkier sources. But who are these new masters of the universe? Where did all their money come from? And what do they want with our beautiful game? In The Billionaires Club James Montague delves deeper than anyone else has dared, to tell this story for the first time.

In 1999, Manchester United completed a unique Treble, winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League - but more remarkable than that was how they did it and the stories behind the historic achievement. Matt Dickinson covered the whole story at the time and now in 99 compelling chapters brings it all vividly to life. 1999:The Treble and All That reveals the real stories behind the legend that was sealed with a last-minute scrambled goal from Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to win the Champions League.

From tennis legend Billie Jean King to the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, athletes have fought for equity and fairness for women in professional sports. Discover the pro athletes who have used their platform to speak out and affect change for all women.

Liverpool and Manchester. Two gloriously independent-minded, eclectic, culturally vibrant places—two cities, both alike in dignity. Yet the inhabitants dislike each other with a passion that is visceral. It is a divide that spans generations, across class and ethnicity. It is a divide that has grown over the years, largely driven by one thing: football. The dark, malignant loathing shared by the followers of Liverpool and Manchester United has seeped into every aspect of life in the two cities. 

Nations, peoples and neighbourhoods across the globe imagine and invent themselves through playing and following the game. In The Age of Football, David Goldblatt charts football’s global cultural ascent, its economic transformation and deep politicisation, taking in prison football in Uganda and amputee football in Angola, the role of football fans in the Arab Spring, the footballing presidencies of Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, China’s declared intention to both host and win the World Cup by 2050 and the FIFA corruption scandal. 

Answered Prayers is a definitive history of the most famous event in British sporting, the triumph of the 1966 England world cup football team and the disastrous effect that victory had on the game.

From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames.

Downloaded over 10 million times a year, The Football Ramble podcast has established itself as the essential independent voice of football punditry. The weekly podcast has resonated with supporters around the world, and their sold-out live shows have been a massive hit with supporters. This audiobook is a collaboration by all four presenters and tackles the real issues from fans you won't see or hear on Sky Sports - or anywhere else, for that matter.

A Woman's Game explores the history of women's football from the Victorian era—with players in high-heeled boots—to the present day. It is the story of a rise, fall and rise again: from the game's first appearance in England in the late 19th century, through the incredible teams, which at their height in 1920 drew 53,000 spectators to Goodison Park, to its 50-year ban in the UK and the aftershocks when that ban was lifted.