This is a sports and business tale of how money, ambition, and twenty-five years of drama remade an ancient institution into a twenty-first-century entertainment empire. No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold. Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly two hundred countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul. Deeply researched and drawing on one hundred exclusive interviews, including the key decision makers at every major English team, The Club is the definitive and wildly entertaining narrative of how the Premier League took over the world.

    Hundreds of thousands of fans tune in weekly to their podcast and television broadcast to get their analysis of the previous week's matches and soccer news. But for all their passion, many American fans are new to the sport: they weren't following it (or weren't yet born) when, for example, Maradona scored two of the most remarkable World Cup goals of all time in 1986, or when George Best was leading Manchester United to glory on the pitch and boozing and rampaging off of it. Now, Rog and Davo fill in all the gaps with this hugely entertaining and idiosyncratic guide to the sport they—and we—love. Published on the eve of the 2018 World Cup, this will be the book every soccer fan will need to have.

    The Argentinian playmaker was renowned for his unbelievable skills and agility, as he effortlessly weaved his way up the pitch and through the opposition defence. Nicknamed 'The Golden Boy', Maradona earned ninety-one caps and scored thirty-one goals for his country, including in the 1986 World Cup where he captained his team to victory - scoring the two most famous goals of all time, against England, along the way!

    Now they are an international phenomenon - one of the most popular clubs and fastest-growing football brands in the world. Every fortnight, an incredible number of foreigners eschew their own clubs and domestic leagues and travel to Dortmund to watch football, while people from all corners of the world dream of doing the same - of standing on the largest terrace in the world, the Yellow Wall.How did this happen? How could a club that hasn't won a European trophy in twenty years so thoroughly capture people's imaginations?Building the Yellow Wall tells the story of Dortmund's roller-coaster ride from humble beginnings and lean decades to the revolution under Jürgen Klopp and subsequent amazing success and popularity. But it also tells the story of those people who have done as much for the club's profile as any player, coach or chairman - Dortmund's unique supporters.

    But that humble investigation eventually led to a huge worldwide corruption scandal that crossed continents and reached the highest levels of the soccer’s world governing body in Switzerland. In Red Card, Ken Bensinger explores the case, and the personalities behind it, in vivid detail. There’s Chuck Blazer, a high-living soccer dad who ascended to the highest ranks of the sport while creaming millions from its coffers; Jack Warner, a Trinidadian soccer official whose lust for power was matched only by his boundless greed; and the sport’s most powerful man, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who held on to his position at any cost even as soccer rotted from the inside out. Remarkably, this corruption existed for decades before American law enforcement officials began to secretly dig, finally revealing that nearly every aspect of the planet’s favorite sport was corrupted by bribes, kickbacks, fraud, and money laundering. Not even the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in history, was safe from the thick web of corruption, as powerful FIFA officials extracted their bribes at every turn. Arriving just in time for the 2018 World Cup, Red Card goes beyond the headlines to bring the real story to light, accompanying the determined American prosecutors and special agents who uncovered what proved to be not only the biggest scandal in sports history, but one of the biggest international corruption cases ever. And it is far from over.

    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.Barcelona, late-nineties: Johan Cruyff's Dream Team is disintegrating and the revolutionary manager has departed, but what will come next will transform the future of football. Cruyff's style has changed the game, and given birth to a generation of thinkers: men like Ronald Koeman, Luis Enrique, Laurent Blanc, Frank de Boer, Louis van Gaal, and Cruyff's club captain Pep Guardiola and a young translator, José Mourinho.The Barcelona Legacy is a book in part about tactics, about how the theories that underpin the modern game were forged by Cruyff and his successors, but also about the people and personalities who gathered at the Camp Nou for what was effectively the greatest coaching seminar in history, about their friendships and rivalries and, in one case, an apocalyptic falling out that continues to shape the game today.

    After Danny Dichio scored the first goal in franchise history, fans at BMO Field threw their seat cushions onto the field in ecstasy. It looked as if TFC had a bright future ahead of them, but what followed instead was eight seasons of poor results, mismanagement, and misery.Still, TFC fans never wavered, building the most unique atmosphere in Toronto sports. When it looked as if TFC were destined to become an afterthought in a city crowded with teams, the club carved out a niche by creating a winning culture unlike anything Toronto had ever seen and bringing a championship to the city in 2017. Come on You Reds takes fans behind the scenes from the inception of TFC, through the team’s lowest years, and finally, to the story of how management built arguably the best team in Major League Soccer history.

    And yet, set against the backdrop of English dominance in the competition it is widely a forgotten achievement. Having achieved promotion seven years earlier under the clubs iconic manager Ron Saunders, Villa became unlikely First Division champions in 1981. With steady progression being made in the European Cup the following season, Saunders resigned suddenly and shockingly, citing a lack of support from the board and a lack of investment in a team he wanted to improve. Though Villa would proceed to the final and ultimately surprise Bayern Munich under the guidance of Tony Barton, the club would quickly slide back into the Second Division. For the first time, journalist and author Richard Sydenham details Villas improbable rise and then its sharp, dramatic fall through exclusive testimonies from the big movers and shakers: the managers, players and chairmen, including the notorious Deadly Doug Ellis. By taking readers inside the boardroom, revealing through minutes who said what to whom at key meetings, Sydenham paints a vivid portrayal that covers more than 20-years of turbulent Midland football history.

    In 1944 a team representing the incipient state was dispatched to play matches around the liberated Mediterranean. This consummated a deep relationship between football and communism that endured until this complex multi-ethnic polity tore itself apart in the 1990s. Starting with an exploration of the game in the short-lived interwar Kingdom, this book traces that liaison for the first time. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, it ventures across the former Yugoslavia to illustrate the myriad ways football was harnessed by an array of political forces. Communists purposefully re-engineered Yugoslavia's most popular sport in the tumult of the 1940s, using it to integrate diverse territories and populations. Subsequently, the game advanced Tito's distinct brand of communism, with its Cold War-era policy of non-alignment and experimentation with self-management. Yet, even under tight control, football was racked by corruption, match-fixing and violence. Alternative political and national visions were expressed in the stadiums of both Yugoslavias, and clubs, players and supporters ultimately became perpetrators and victims in the countries’ violent demise.In Richard Mills' hands, the former Yugoslavia’s stadiums become vehicles to explore the relationship between sport and the state, society, nationalism, state-building, inter-ethnic tensions and war. The book is the first in-depth study of the Yugoslav game and offers a revealing new way to approach the complex history of Yugoslavia.

    When thousands of Somali refugees resettled in Lewiston, Maine, a struggling, overwhelmingly white town, longtime residents grew uneasy. Then the mayor wrote a letter asking Somalis to stop coming, which became a national story. While scandal threatened to subsume the town, its high school's soccer coach integrated Somali kids onto his team, and their passion began to heal old wounds. Taking readers behind the tumult of this controversial team -- and onto the pitch where the teammates vied to become state champions and achieved a vital sense of understanding -- One Goal is a timely story about overcoming the prejudices that divide us.

    Authoritative and comprehensive, The Official History of the FIFA World Cup reviews every tournament since the games were inaugurated in Uruguay in 1930. Packed with stunning photography, official documents, and statistics, this unique book tells behind-the-scenes stories, analyzes the legendary matches, and features the biggest stars as well as many lesser-known players. It’s a must-read for soccer fans around the world.

    

    And yet, question marks have followed him around; question marks about his goalkeeping suitability after arriving on Merseyside; question marks about his integrity after match fixing allegations were laid against him. Here, Grobbelaar takes you to Africa, where nothing is at it seems; he takes you back to an era when Liverpool ruled Europe; he takes you to the benches of the Anfield dressing room, where only the strongest personalities survived. For the first time, he takes you inside the court room, detailing the draining fight to clear his name.

     A hundred points and over a hundred goals for the greatest Premier League team of them all. This was the season that Pep Guardiola's philosophies came to fruition, as he cracked the Premier League, and his team broke records on an almost weekly basis. It was the season where that his vision was acknowledged on the pitch and off it, and it left all the competition trailing in their wake. So take a look back at a historic season as chronicled week by week, with thoughts on every match, spoof articles, a look at the wider game, journalist Q & As, player ratings, season highlights and much more besides. It was a season with some downs but many more ups for Manchester City fans everywhere. It's a season you'll want to re-live over and over again.

    Yet as Duncan Hamilton demonstrates with style, insight and wit in Going to the Match, watching on TV is no substitute for being there. Hamilton embarks on a richly entertaining, exquisitely crafted journey through football. Glory game or grass roots, England v Slovenia or Guiseley v Hartlepool, he delves beneath the action to illuminate the stories which make the sport endlessly compelling. Along the way he marvels at present-day titans Harry Kane, Mo Salah, Kevin De Bruyne and Paul Pogba, reflects on sepia-tinted magicians Stanley Matthews, Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Charlton and Pele, and assesses managerial giants from Brian Clough and Jose Mourinho to Arsene Wenger and Gareth Southgate. The odyssey takes Hamilton from Fleetwood to Berlin, via Glasgow and a Manchester derby, making detours into art, cinema, literature and politics as he explores the game's ever-changing culture and character. The result, like the L.S. Lowry painting that inspired the book, is a football masterpiece.

    

    This is NOT for you. With game-proven methods to score more against any team, this is your manual for soccer success! How teams play is unpredictable… or is it? Through countless hours of practice, training, and experience, soccer's elite have shown consistent patterns of in-game skills that when applied, will lead to predictable outcomes - more goals, more assists, and more wins! Learn the keys to being a better soccer player through knowledge. In other words, there are warm-ups, instructional drills, and workouts to sharpen your skills that take advantage of the human anatomy, an unshakable mindset, and proper form in soccer. In Soccer Training, you have well over 100 tips from scoring to defending, fitness to nutrition, and on-the-field tactics to boosters for your free time. Each is explained to answer the question, “How can I use these steps to prepare for and use during every game that I play?” Learn what coaches do not teach, not because they don't care, but because they just don't know. Often, coaches only emphasize the team's abilities, while giving little to no time and minimal volume to the skills of each individual. It is just as essential to develop the players within the system as it is to strengthen the squad itself. This book is a high-level overview of the areas that can take a player from being a bench-warmer to MVP. In a day and age where many so-called experts' advice is to improve your conditioning, get more touches, try harder, and you need to want it more, this book stands out on delivering the steps to turn any player into a top performer. Who this book is for: - The defender who does not know which direction to push an attacker or how to position their body correctly. - The midfielder who does not get enough assists and is not considered to be the team's playmaker. - The striker/attacker/forward who does not score at least 2 goals a game. - The soccer player who needs a confidence boost that comes from game-ready knowledge. - The parent who loves their child, but hates to see them struggle with a lack of confidence on what to do. - The coach who focuses on team drills, but knows that their squad can go further if their shooting power, passing form, and foot skills improved through correct methods and increased IQ. Outcomes of applying the facts in this book: - Understand how to beat a defender every time. - Know which skills to avoid. - Condition your mindset to become one of a winner. - Remove the toxic habits you need to break. Correctly understand soccer to unlock what you need to know for boys, girls, kids, teens, young adults, men, and women. You may ask "why should I order this book versus watching free YouTube videos?" Well, though YouTube can be used to compliment this book because videos are great ways to show visual representations of skills, each video is often unorganized and there is little structure on the order in which you watch the videos. This book provides that structure so that you are not just getting a little information in one area and some knowledge in another without being able to know how everything works together. It gives every player the ability to know that (1) your team will win (2) you will lead them to victory and (3) you have the knowledge to perform! Soccer Training contains the facts that wi

    Fans on the Kop will remember the heart-stopping extra time of the 1965 FA Cup Final, and the jubilation of winning the treble in 1984. But what was the common thread during Liverpool's glory years? It was the Boot Room. Lifelong Liverpool supporter and editor of legendary fanzine The End, Peter Hooton takes us back into that old storage room, where first Shankly, then in succession Paisley, Fagan and Dalglish drank tea, analysed, strategised, selected and deselected, and built the most successful British club in Europe in the 20th Century. Illustrated throughout with over 100 powerful never-before-seen images from the Mirror's forgotten archives, The Boot Room Boys captures the story, as it unfolded, of Liverpool's conquering heroes.

    Women's Soccer team won the World Cup in 1999, the team's--and the sport's--popularity exploded in America. The Americans' electrifying rise to the top marked the biggest women's sporting event in our nation's history. Players like Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain instantly became international stars, setting the stage for the arrival of future greats like Carli Lloyd, Abby Wambach, and Alex Morgan. And with women's professional leagues continuing to take shape in America, as well as the skyrocketing popularity of the U.S. Women's National Team, there's no doubt that women's soccer has captivated fans across the country and beyond.Featuring Top Ten Lists and stunning photos of history-making moments, this comprehensive collection catalogs the rise of women's soccer in America; the greatest American players such as Mia Hamm, Hope Solo, and Alex Morgan; the greatest international stars, including Marta and Homare Sawa; the future class of superstars; and the most thrilling World Cup and Olympic matches. This is the perfect book for young sports fans eager to kick off their soccer schooling.Praise for Champions of Women's Soccer * Killion has distilled the best of the best moments and biographical information into an easy-to-read and exciting look at the players and moments in women's soccer. . . . Sports fans will be overjoyed, but the superhero-comics crowd might also be pleasantly surprised by these modern-day wonder women. A must-have for any biography section. --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEWThe focus on women athletes represents a much-needed perspective in sports books for tweens and will be a welcome addition. --School Library JournalThis is an engaging read, perfect for fans of soccer and women's sports. --VOYAWhether new to the sport or a devotedfan, readers will find an overview of recent and current stars in professional women's soccer in thisenthusiastic guide. --Booklist

    Patricks Day! Every March 17, the people of Ireland kick off a three-day celebration to honor their country and their patron saint. Irelands many celebrations, people, landscapes, and more are highlighted in this striking book.