He is certainly, by his own admission, a man who leaves nothing to chance. A disciple in the 1970s of Rinus Michels' Total Football philosophy, he is a fascinating contradiction - an ultra-individualist utterly devoted to the collective effort. He believes in the team over the individual, in always having a plan and a team prepared to follow that plan. Van Gaal led the young Ajax team he moulded to Champions League glory in 1995, went on to win titles across Europe with Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich and is currently in his second stint as national coach of Holland. It is a career that has never been short on colour and drama - from fallouts with players to rants at the media wherever he has managed. Dutch football commentator Maarten Meijer's has written the definitive biography of Van Gaal - both the man and his methods. It offers the best psychological insight so far - from his earliest roots to his greatest triumphs - into the man given the task of returning the glory days to Manchester United.

    They may even have a point. But to build something so successful, so popular, so inescapable, you've got to have mighty strong foundations.Prior to 1992, the old First Division was England's premier prize. Its rich tapestry winds back to 1888 and the formation of the Football League. A grand century-long tradition in danger of being lost in the wake of Premier League year zero.No more! In The Title Scott Murray tells the lively, cherry-picked story of English football through the prism of the First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious meander across our national sport's varied terrain.With as much about Burnley, Wolves, West Brom and Portsmouth as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop, the smallest club to ever play top-flight football, and final day drama involving Huddersfield and Cardiff that knocks Michael Thomas into a cocked hat. We bask in the managerial genius of Tom Watson, the bowler-hatted Victorian Mourinho; celebrate the joy of the Busby Babes; discover the shameless showmanship of George Allison; embark on righteous escapades with Hughie Gallacher; and meet some old favourites in Don Revie, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough.At turns exciting, surprising, witty and bittersweet, The Title is a highly informed, fresh and affectionate love-letter to the English game, and a delight for any football fan.

    Harry started in an age where players were ordinary blokes who might live on the same street as you and earn a similar wage. Now he manages in an era of player power, multi-million pound wages and teams assembled from around the globe.As he shares stories of some of the legends and journeymen he played, coached, argued and drank with, Harry picks a team for each decade from the 1950s to the present. He gets to the heart of what was right and wrong with each era and explores the changes in the game from lifestyle to tactics. He weaves his choices together with unforgettable tales from the training pitches, boot rooms and card schools.There are tales of the untutored genius of Duncan Edwards and Tom Finney, legendary tough Scots like Bobby Collins, Dave Mackay and Billy Bremner, the world-beaters of 1966, unpredictable one-off wizards from Sir Stanley Matthews to Matt Le Tissier, natural-born goalscorers from Greaves to Dalglish and the greatest foreign players to grace our game from Trautmann to Bergkamp. It is one of the best informal histories of the British game you’ll ever read.

    She’s a recent college grad stuck working the checkout lane of her hometown grocery store. For all she knows, love will never find her … until she gets a friend request from the hot football player who bullied her in high school. Someone she swore she’d never talk to ever again. Travis is a pro football star and enjoys the advantages of that life: money, women, fame. But deep down, he’s missing something – the nerdy hot girl he had been mean to in high school. When he sees her picture on social media, he only hopes she’ll forgive him and give him a chance to show her how much he’d always wanted her - how much he needs her now. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: FUMBLE BABY is a standalone happily-ever-after romance story with no cliffhangers

    It was, however, preferable to his day job of paving driveways, and that day in 2005 saw the start of an incredible journey for Ferris, Ulster and Ireland rugby. A Celtic League title in his very first senior season with Ulster. A Grand Slam in 2009, followed by a sensational Lions breakthrough. A starring role in Ireland's greatest World Cup win, over Australia in 2011, when Ferris famously picked up Will Genia and carried him ten yards. And leading Ulster from nowhere to the Heineken Cup final.Stephen Ferris had an incredible rugby career, tragically ended by ankle injuries so severe they will never properly heal. He is an inspiration to the population of Ulster, an emblem of the sport that serves as such a positive expression of its culture and identity, and earned the respect and admiration of fans across Ireland for his strength, pace, skill and courage. Fearless, funny and full of an incredible array of stories from behind the scenes of Ulster, Ireland and the Lions, this is the must-have rugby book of the year.

     To be childish is to expect a certain outcome will come your way, that you deserve to hole the putt or that you shouldn’t miss from a certain distance. The Lost Art of Putting will help you become more child-like on the greens and less childish. Leading tour coach Gary Nicol and performance coach Karl Morris have 60 years’ combined coaching experience. It is their belief that the game of golf is not about finding ‘the’ way to do it but more a case of discovering, or perhaps more importantly uncovering, ‘your’ way to do it. The perspective and concepts they share with you in this book have the potential to liberate you so that you can experience what you are truly capable of on the greens.

    Ex-players, close friends, journalists, managers and former colleagues reveal their astonishing brushes with the greatest football manager England never had. The stories are cherry-picked from two acclaimed books - 150BC: Cloughie the Inside Stories and Clough: Confidential. An additional 242 stories can be found in these two volumes. So, enter the whirlwind world of Old Big 'Ead and prepare to be entertained.

    The Secret Footballer has teamed up with one of the most highly respected physios in the game to bring you the stories of a football season through the eyes of someone who has covered over 1000 games in his career and who knows the most intimate details about every player he treats.From the pre-season pressures of a new manager and players who have overindulged on their summer breaks, to witnessing some truly horrific (and sometimes career-ending) injuries; from star players who think nothing of using him as their personal family doctor to revealing some of the more unconventional treatments players choose to experiment with, the physio has truly seen it all.Alongside this privileged glimpse into the physio's world, The Secret Footballer will be telling his own tales of injury, pain and perseverance with his trademark insight and wit.

    Forest won the First Division championship, two League Cups and back-to-back European Cups and they did it, incredibly, with five of the players Clough inherited at a club that was trying to avoid relegation to the third tier of English football.I Believe In Miracles accompanies the critically-acclaimed documentary and DVD of the same name. Based on exclusive interviews with virtually every member of the Forest team, it covers the greatest period in Clough's extraordinary life and brings together the stories of the unlikely assortment of free transfers, bargain buys, rogues, misfits and exceptionally gifted footballers who came together under the most charismatic manager there has ever been.

    Once hailed as The King, and widely acclaimed as one of the greatest footballers of his generation, Carey fell from the highest pinnacle of the game to the lowest of lows. From his brutal upbringing in Wagga Wagga to his early teen years where he discovered his love of, and talent for, football, Wayne's candid story of his early life reveals much about the man who has dominated headlines for more than a decade – first for his brilliance on the field, but more often for his troubled personal life.Covering the highs of his glory days at North Melbourne to his public downfall after his affair with his vice-captain's wife, Carey's memoir is extraordinarily honest. It is self-searching and searing in its examination of his own behaviour and its effects on those around him. His departure from North Melbourne marked the end of King Carey, and the beginning of a decline that was to see him bailed up in jail in both the US and Australia. His life became a train wreck, as he lurched from one disastrous incident to the next – from his serial infidelity to massive alcohol binges and a growing cocaine addiction – each played out on the front page of every newspaper in the country. This is the story of how a man can reach rock bottom, but begin to haul himself up again.The truth sets you free – but it can hurt. This is without doubt the most powerful sporting memoir ever published in Australia.

    

    In the summer of 1977, entrepreneurial Warner Brothers chairman Steve Ross assembled the best soccer players from across the globe to play for the Cosmos. Pele, the German superstar Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Neeskens, Giorgio Chinaglia, Brazil's 1970 World Cup-winning captain Carlos Alberto, Werner Roth, Roberto Cabanas, and many others all donned Cosmos jerseys and became instant celebrities in the process. The Cosmos quickly became the hottest ticket in town and the Cosmos players soon became enmeshed in a world of millionaires, gangsters, groupies, glamour, power struggles, alcoholic excess, drugs, and fistfights.Published to coincide with the World Cup in June 2006, Once in a Lifetime is the thrilling story of America's first flirtation with the world's most popular game.

    would start a new professional league. The North American Soccer League had failed just four years prior, and the prospects of launching a new league for Americans, who didn’t share the rest of the world’s love for soccer, were both exciting and daunting.The United States of Soccer is the engaging history of MLS’s bootstrap origins prior to its 1996 launch, its near-demise in the early 2000s, its surprising resilience and growth in the following years, and its continued rise in respectability and recognition from soccer fans around the world.The book also explores the origin of a number of MLS’s best-known supporters groups – the superfans responsible for setting the tone within MLS stadiums and defining what it is to be a North American soccer fan. The book looks at how MLS helped develop the massive American audiences for the most recent men’s and women’s World Cups – peaking at 27 million for the 2015 Women’s World Cup finals – even as it looks to expand its number of franchises and grow its audience in a sports-saturated world.Phil West chronicles those fans’ voices – intermingled with league officials, former players and coaches, journalists, and newspaper accounts – to detail MLS’s remarkable journey for those new to the U.S.’s top-tier league, as well as those who think they know the full MLS story.

    It transcends the years, the standings, and all other distractions. And thanks to the countless remarkable football games between Michigan and Ohio State--and hundreds of thousands of devoted alumni and followers--the rivalry is now an enormous cultural event.

    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.