Aged 16, White was the youngest player to win the English Amateur Championship. At 18, he won the World Amateur title. By 1984, he's a professional success, married but not at all settled. He's the kind of man who goes out for a packet of cigarettes and comes home two weeks later. Gambling, women, marathon binges with showbiz friends like Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, have threatened the stability of his marriage. But somehow White has survived, to tell in candid detail, a most unusual, often outrageous story of a very sporting life.

    From the author of devastating exposes of Mohamed Fayed, Richard Branson and, most recently, Geoffrey Robinson, this is an incisive account of how self-interested individuals, adopting questionable and predatory business methods, are exploiting the sport of football to earn billions of pounds and huge glory."

    Rare are the football innovations that have occurred without an owner, general manager, coach, or player up against the wall and reaching for a way to succeed anyway. In this meticulously researched, lively book, Bleacher Report lead NFL scout Doug Farrar traces the schematic history of the pro game through these “if this/then that” moments—paradigm shifts in the game from 1920 through the present. More than just a book about schemes and strategies, The Genius of Desperation: The Schematic Innovations that Made the Modern NFL also tells the stories of the game’s most prominent innovators, the adversities they endured, and the ways in which they learned to exceed their own expectations on the path to true greatness. Everyone from George Halas to Greasy Neale, Paul Brown to Sid Gillman, Bill Walsh to Chip Kelly is featured, as well as many more.

    As the only English football captain ever to raise the World Cup, he was not just a football icon but a national one.Yet Bobby was an intensely reserved, almost mysterious personality. Only one person was his true friend and confidante – his boyhood sweetheart, Tina, whom he met at 17 and married soon after.Tina Moore’s story of her life with Bobby, the triumphs and crises of his football career, the break-up of their marriage and what happened afterwards, is a moving tribute to a national icon by the person who knew him better than anyone.

    That first year was the epitome of Raiders football-- the silver-and-black team of renegades steamrolled opponents and defeated the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl. For nearly ten years, Huizenga lived in the real NFL trenches, a battlefield atmosphere where getting hurt and partying hard was the name of the game. Jam-packed with close-up anecdotes about football's warriors, this book reveals:* The mind games and methods of mysterious Raiders owner Al Davis* The truth about drug and steroid use in the NFL* The pressure on players to perform even when threatened by serious injury* Harrowing and hilarious true stories about the side of football fans never see* The wild life and tragic death of Lyle Alzado

    Now, he turns his eye to the most popular sport on the planet: soccer. It's a journey that begins with the first game John saw, in 1960s-era Ireland, through soccer in the 21st century - the World Cups in 02, 06, and 10, the European Championships in 04 and 08. In between the drunken fans, crazed taxi drivers, leprechauns and lederhosen, Doyle muses on the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon. He shows a sport where for 90 minutes on the pitch anything seems possible. A game where colonized nations can tackle the power of their colonizers; where oppressed immigrant groups can thoroughly trounce their host countries. This book examines soccer from a new angle. John Doyle offers a compelling social history of the ultimate sport, each country and team competing in the historic 2010 World Cup, and how the game has kept pace as the global village has sprung up around the playing field.From the Hardcover edition.

    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

    Football is how the world sees Brazil and Brazilians see themselves. The game symbolises racial harmony, flamboyance, youth, innovation and skill, and yet football is also a microcosm of Latin America's largest country and contains all of its contradictions. Travelling extensively from the Uruguayan border to the north-eastern backlands, from the coastal cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to the Amazon jungle, the author, Alex Bellos, shows how Brazil changed football and how football shaped Brazil. Bellos tells the stories behind the great players, like Pele and Garrincha, between the great teams, like Corinthians and Vasco de Gama, and the great matches, as well as extraordinary stories from people and pitches all over this country.

    . . then he went to London and discovered the high-octane, fanatical (and bloody confusing!) world of English soccer.After covering the American sports scene for fifteen years, Chuck Culpepper suffered from a profound case of Common Sportswriter Malaise. He was fed up with self-righteous proclamations, steroid scandals, and the deluge of in-your-face PR that saturated the NFL, the NBA, and MLB. Then in 2006, he moved to London and discovered a new and baffling world—the renowned Premiership soccer league. Culpepper pledged his loyalty to Portsmouth, a gutsy, small-market team at the bottom of the standings. As he puts it, “It was like childhood, with beer.”Writing in the vein of perennial bestsellers such as Fever Pitch and Among the Thugs, Chuck Culpepper brings penetrating insight to the vibrant landscape of English soccer—visiting such storied franchises as Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool . . . and an equally celebrated assortment of pubs. Bloody Confused! will put a smile on the face of any sports fan who has ever questioned what makes us love sports in the first place.

    Landing on his left foot, he takes a step with his right, swivels, and in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground, volleys it past the onrushing Argentine goalkeeper into the far corner of the net. The goal wins Germany the World Cup for the first time in almost twenty-five years. In the aftermath, Götze looks dazed, unable to comprehend what he has done.In Das Reboot, journalist and television pundit Raphael Honigstein charts the return of German football from the international wilderness of the late 1990s to Götze’s moment of genius and asks how did this come about? How did German football transform itself from its efficient, but unappealing and defensively minded traditions to the free-flowing, attacking football that was on display in 2014? The answer takes him from California to Stuttgart, from Munich to the Maracaná, via Dortmund and Durban. Packed with exclusive interviews with the key protagonists, Honigstein’s book lifts the lid on the secrets of German football’s success.

    The man whose Liverpool team won trophies at a rate-per-season that dwarfs Sir Alex Ferguson's achievements at Manchester United and who remains the only Briton to lead a team to three European Cups.From Wembley to Rome, Manchester to Madrid, Paisley's team was the one no one could touch. Working in a city which was on its knees, in deep post-industrial decline, still tainted by the 1981 Toxteth riots and in a state of open warfare with Margaret Thatcher, he delivered a golden era - never re-attained since - which made the city of Liverpool synonymous with success and won them supporters the world over. Yet, thirty years since Paisley died, the life and times of this shrewd, intelligent, visionary, modest football man have still never been fully explored and explained.Based on in-depth interviews with Paisley's family and many of the players whom he led to an extraordinary haul of honours between 1974 and 1983, Quiet Genius is the first biography to examine in depth the secrets of Paisley's success. It inspects his man-management strategies, his extraordinary eye for a good player, his uncanny ability to diagnose injuries in his own players and the opposition, and the wicked sense of humour which endeared him to so many. It explores the North-East mining community roots which he cherished, and considers his visionary outlook on the way the game would develop.Quiet Genius is the story of how one modest man accomplished more than any other football manager, found his attributes largely unrecorded and undervalued and, in keeping with the gentler ways of his generation, did not seem to mind. It reveals an individual who seemed out of keeping with the brash, celebrity sport football was becoming, and who succeeded on his own terms. Three decades on from his death, it is a football story that demands to be told.

    The battle he'd face there would make or break the club - or him.David Peace's extraordinarily inventive novel tells the story of a world characterised by fear of failure and hunger for success set in the bleak heart of the 1970s.

    But for eleven-year-old Jason McAteer, growing up in the shadow of Liverpool FC, football became the dream. After signing with Bolton Wanderers at the age of twenty-one, the call to the international scene followed with the Republic of Ireland and, soon after, to his beloved Liverpool FC. The dream had become a reality. From his time with the Irish World Cup squad of 1994 to those tumultuous days in Saipan in 2002; on through his decision to leave Liverpool for Blackburn Rovers; his move to Sunderland, and the depression he fell into after finishing his professional career with Tranmere Rovers, Jason McAteer looks back with characteristic honesty and humour on his life - the jokes, the matches, and the personalities.This is the real Jason McAteer: a little bit bruised, a little bit battered. But still fighting.

    Meet the greatest players you never saw. Discover how one game can cause 35 divorces, one honeymoon and a police raid. Go the next level with our guide to Extreme FMIain Macintosh writes about football for numerous publications in Asia, USA and the UK and is one of the Football 50, the top football writers on Twitter according to TEAMtalk. Kenny Millar is a sportswriter for The Sunday Post. Neil White is a former sportswriter for The Sunday Times. All three are Football Manager addicts.

    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.