But now the oligarchs who profited from the post-Soviet turmoil are supporting the nation's football clubs and their dreams of glory, resulting in unprecedented success. Along this journey into the heart of Russian football, Marc Bennetts meets the managers, oligarchs, players, pundits and fans that define the Russian Premier league, now the fastest-growing and most intriguing football league in the world. From Andrei Arshavin and the national team's adventures at Euro 2008 to the symbolism of a club from war-torn Chechnya lifting the Russian FA Cup, Football Dynamo uncovers shocking revelations about corruption, hooliganism and racism, but also the true beauty of the game and the country.

    He was at the center of the wildest play in college football history, simply known as "The Play." Before he signed a pro contract, there was "The Trade." His NFL career included "The Drive" and "The Fumble," and, of course, "The Helicopter," one of the most iconic highlights in Super Bowl lore. There are so many memorable comeback victories and heroic plays that people have to make lists rather than consider Elway in the context of any singular event.Yet Elway's story is filled with one challenge after another. At Stanford, he never played in a Bowl game. He was ripped for being petulant after refusing to sign with the Baltimore Colts when he was drafted No. 1 overall, and later for his failure to get along with coach Dan Reeves. Over the first 10 years of his career, Elway led Denver to three Super Bowls, but lost in progressively worse fashion each time. Finally, after fifteen years of perseverance, Elway led the Broncos to back-to-back championships, including the biggest upset in Super Bowl history. Elway won the MVP award in his final Super Bowl and then walked away from the game.Within four years, Elway's father and twin sister both died, and he went through a difficult divorce. Reeling in his post-retirement, he returned to football . . . at the bottom, running the Colorado Crush of the Arena Football League. He waited more than a decade to return to his beloved Broncos. While many people doubted him initially, Elway navigated the Broncos through massive changes and to victory in Super Bowl 50, making Elway the rare Hall of Famer to win a title both on and off the field. Elway has put his passion for competition on display in a way that only a handful of other NFL greats have ever done, and Elway is the most complete look at one of the most accomplished legends in the history of American sports.

    They were a ragtag team of girls who wanted to play soccer, and no one took them seriously. Their male coach expected little from his "ladies, " and their mediocre performance convinced them he was right.Then a kind of miracle happened. Emiria Salzmann, Thunder's new coach, a top player herself, knew what it took to win--discipline, relentless drills, thigh-burning sprints, and an inspired passing game. The girls hated it, but their coach never let up. Tough and determined, she showed them what it felt like to be winners--and they loved it. As the momentum grew with a string of victories, the girls thrived on the competition, believing they had the right stuff to become champions.They were right! With spirits soaring, Thunder won its league on the last day of the season and headed for the state cup, emerging not just as powerful athletes but as strong, confident, emotionally healthy human beings--champions in the game of soccer, and in the game of life.

    Since bursting onto the international trail-running scene by winning the first multistage race he ever entered – the brutal Gobi March – Ryan has gone on to win various other multistage and single-day races around the globe. Written with bestselling author and journalist Steve Smith, Trail Blazer – My Life as an Ultra-distance Trail Runner recounts the life story of this intrepid sportsman, from his experiences as a rudderless party animal to becoming a world-class athlete, and includes details on his training regimes, race strategies and aspirations for future sporting endeavours.Sports enthusiasts will enjoy the adrenaline-inducing trials and tribulations of one of South Africa’s most awe-inspiring athletes, while endurance-sport participants – from beginners to aspirant pros – will benefit from his insights and advice. As Professor Tim Noakes says in the Foreword to this book: ‘However much we might think we know and understand, there are some phenomena which now, and perhaps forever, we will never fully comprehend. We call such happenings “enigmas”. Or even miracles. Ryan Sandes is one such.’

    Having run out of options, former YouTube star Dax Flame must get a job at an ice cream shop in order to make ends meet.

    At 16, Paul Ferris becomes Newcastle United's youngest-ever first-teamer. Like many a tricky winger from Northern Ireland, he is hailed as 'the new George Best'.As a player and later a physio and member of the Magpies' managerial team, Paul's career acquaints him not only with Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and Bobby Robson, Ruud Gullit, Paul Gascoigne and Alan Shearer but also with injury, insecurity and disappointment.Yet this autobiography is more than a tale of the vagaries of sporting fortune. It begins during 'The Troubles' in a working-class Catholic family in the Protestant town of Lisburn, near Belfast. After a childhood scarred by his mother's illness and sectarian hatred, Paul meets the love of his life, his future wife Geraldine. Talented and carefree on the pitch, shy and anxious off it, he earns a tilt at stardom. His first spell at Newcastle turns sour, as does his return as a physio, although obtaining a Masters degree shows him what he could achieve away from football.When Paul qualifies as a barrister, a career in Law beckons. Instead, a craving to prove himself in the game draws him back to St James' Park as part of Shearer's management triumvirate - with unfortunate consequences.Written with brutal candour, dark humour and consummate style, The Boy on the Shed is a riveting and moving account of a life less ordinary

    The game has been his life, and his enduring passion.Souness has written a perceptive and opinionated autobiography. It chronicles one of the most successful and colourful careers in the history of British football. But it also provides an intriguing assessment of the game which has dominated his existence, drawing extensively on his incredibly rich and varied experiences as a player, manager and pundit.The result is a shrewd, incisive and hard-hitting memoir, at times tinged with hindsight and regret, which also grapples with many of the major talking points affecting the game today. It is shot through with Souness' trademark tenacity and wisdom, and with fantastic anecdotes from his glittering career.In many ways, Football: My Life, My Passion is the story of the last half-century of British football writ large.

    His experience was not the little league, boys-of-summer stuff of modern America. For him, it was life and death. Now middleaged and living in California, Alan finds himself coaching a team of eight-year-olds in his beloved sport—and nothing is going right. For a start, the kids are no good at soccer. Secondly, they’re pampered. Born and bred on the sport, Black’s hardscrabble Scottish upbringing consisted of playing tough and victory at all costs. Needless to say, his coaching methods are a far cry from the “winning isn’t everything” mentality his little leaguers have been reared with; and players and parents alike are shocked as Black attempts to transform the losing team through drills and bombast. Alone at night, watching evangelicals on TV, Black finds himself searching for some truth in the culture he finds so bizarre. And it’s with the Tigers that he feels most out of sync—faced with a mix of soft suburban children, a raft of overprotective parents, and an Iranian co-coach called Ali. Told with Black’s uproarious Scottish sensibility, Kick the Balls follows the abrasive, irreverent, and hilarious coach as he contends with a team that winds up with a zero-win record. Both a celebration of his own tough childhood and an account of one man’s navigation of an alien culture, Kick the Balls will delight fans of well-told, laugh-out-loud memoirs.

    Kevin’s mum, Anne, was not there to answer his call but she never let her son down. From that fateful day, April 15, 1989, she embarked on a remarkable 24-year battle to see justice done. Convinced of a cover-up by the powers that be, she left no stone unturned in her quest to uncover the truth. It was a campaign that she fought to her dying day, succumbing to cancer at the age of 62 in April, 2013. Anne’s efforts had not been in vain. Just months earlier, a historic breakthrough saw the original inquest verdicts quashed, following a public apology to the Hillsborough families by Prime Minister David Cameron. Her daughter Sara, Kevin’s sister, was with Anne every step of the way. Now, with the help of personal recollections penned by her mum in her final months, she tells the real story of Anne’s remarkable journey – her spirit in the face of the many setbacks and her defiant refusal to accept defeat. Anne’s final message before losing her fight for life was ‘I never walked alone’. This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever fought for justice in the name of the 96.Copyright: All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holders, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

    Baseball Prospectus 2010 brings together an elite group of analysts to provide the definitive look at the upcoming season in critical essays and commentary on the thirty teams, their managers, and more than sixty players and prospects from each team.Contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for each of those teamsProjects each players stats for the coming season using the groundbreaking PECOTA projection system, which has been called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model" (Sports Illustrated)From Baseball Prospectus, America's leading provider of statistical analysis for baseballNow in its fifteenth edition, this New York Times bestselling insider's guide remains hands down the most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind.

         Known for his opinions--and unabashed expression of them--Don Cherry has been causing debate for decades. Topics on "Coach's Corner" sometimes veer away from sports and on to other matters that are near and dear to Cherry's heart: the war in Afghanistan and politics, among many others.      In Straight Up and Personal, Cherry shares his thoughts on a broader range of issues than he ever has before. He shares some of his personal experiences on and off the ice, and offers the lessons he's learned along the way. This is Don Cherry: straight up and personal.

    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. It is part history of club ownership, part in-depth investigation into the money and influence that connects the super-rich around the globe, and part travel book as he crosses national boundaries in an attempt to reveal the real force behind modern-day football.Whilst almost always cloaked in secrecy, the billionaire owner has to raise his head above the bunker when it comes to football ownership--a rare Achilles heel that allows access to worlds normally off limits for journalists and outsiders. And so Montague criss-crosses the world--from Texas to North Shields, from Malaysia to Montevideo, from Russia to Rajasthan--to profile this new elite, their network of money and their influence that defies geographic boundaries.At its heart The Billionaires' Club is a football book, about some of the biggest clubs in the world. But it is also about something bigger: the world around us, the global economy, where the world is headed and how football has become an essential cog in this machine.

    Bold and frank, this is Vinnie laid bare. Born and bred in Watford, Jones represented and captained the Welsh national football team after qualifying through a Welsh grandparent. He won the 1988 FA Cup final against Liverpool before moving to Wimbledon and then Leeds United. He has also played for Chelsea. His celebrity status has grown over the years after appearing in the 2010 series of Big Brother and coming third, as well as the hugely successful British Heart Foundation CPR campaign. Vinnie's bad boy tag has followed him into the world of film where he has used his hard man status to secure roles in hugely successful Brit Flicks, such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

    From an unknown prospect to the first man to hold two world titles simultaneously, McGregor's knockout-filled march through the featherweight and lightweight rankings sent shockwaves through the world. But as effortless as McGregor's heroics seem, his journey was far from smooth. Just another teenager trading martial arts techniques with his friends, he chased a pipe dream with little promise of reward. No one guessed he would become the biggest pay-per-view attraction in the world. This is not another tale of an athlete born exceptional and groomed for success. It is about how one young man, through bloody-minded determination and indomitable spirit, changed the whole game.

    memorable and distinctive.' The Irish TimesBefore Jim McGuinness took over as manager of the Donegal senior football team in the summer of 2010, they were in GAA wilderness. When he stepped down just over four years later, the same group of players had won three Ulster championships, the All-Ireland title of 2012 and succeeded in overturning a century-old perception of how Gaelic football should be played. His departure also marked the end of a personal odyssey, which had begun almost three decades earlier and weathered the aftermath of two family tragedies.A sports classic, Until Victory Always is both an unforgettable account of McGuinness's years at the helm of the Donegal team and a moving testament to the power of sport to sustain us in our darkest moments.'A story about how the rawness of grief could end up inspiring not just a man but a county. The story is good; the prose is better.' The Sunday Times'This compulsively readable, deeply involving book transcends the sports genre by vividly portraying a fiercely passionate, hugely ambitious and utterly uncompromising figure.' The Sunday Business Post'A story of inspiration, dedication and courage.' The Sunday Independent