A Woman's Game explores the history of women's football from the Victorian era 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 Dick, Kerr Ladies team that at its 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.Now, as the women's game is once again on an unstoppable upward trend, with a record 6.3m viewers for England's match against Scotland in the 2019 World Cup, Suzanne Wrack considers what the next chapter of this incredible story might be. From its relationship to the worldwide fight against oppression, to its ability to inspire change in wider at large, this is both a history of football as played by women, and a manifesto for a better game.

“Whether you are interested in football or not, this is tears-running-down-your-face funny, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest about Hornby’s obsession and the state of the game.” —GQA brilliant memoir from the beloved, bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Funny Girl, and High Fidelity.In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that’s before the players even take the field.Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby’s award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom—its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men’s coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

A New Formation is an inventive and highly original analysis of the contributions that Black British footballers have made to Black British culture.Calum Jacobs and his co-contributors - including authors Musa Okwonga and Aniefiok Ekpoudom and sports broadcaster Jeanette Kwakye - eschew the standard frameworks of trauma and oppression that are foisted upon Black narratives. Instead, they draw upon broader social and cultural history to examine Black footballers in contexts larger than themselves. By engaging with the subtle connections between football and Black cultural expression, A New Formation reveals the vibrancy and nuance of contemporary Black life in Britain.Featuring interviews with Andy Cole, Ian Wright and Anita Asante.

Moneyball meets Freakonomics in this myth-busting guide to understanding—and winning—the most popular sport on the planet.Innovation is coming to soccer, and at the center of it all are the numbers—a way of thinking about the game that ignores the obvious in favor of how things actually are. In The Numbers Game, Chris Anderson, a former professional goalkeeper turned soccer statistics guru, teams up with behavioral analyst David Sally to uncover the numbers that really matter when it comes to predicting a winner. Investigating basic but profound questions—How valuable are corners? Which goal matters most? Is possession really nine-tenths of the law? How should a player’s value be judged?—they deliver an incisive, revolutionary new way of watching and understanding soccer.

... Explores The Myths Of Holland's Good War -- The Brave Nation That Hid Anne Frank From The Nazis -- By Using The Story Of Soccer In Holland And The Amsterdam Club Ajax To Puncture The Tales That Post-war Holland Lives By. Through Interviews With Resistance Fighters, Survivors, Wartime Soccer Players And More, Kuper Uncovers A History That Has Been Largely Ignored. Ranging Far Beyond The Netherlands And Examining The Stories Of Soccer And War In England, German And France, Kuper Writes An Alternative History Of Europe At Its Darkest Hour. He Helps Change The Way We Understand Ordinary People's Experience Of The War In Europe. -- Back Cover. L. Orange Soldiers -- 2. A Sunday Before The War -- 3. A Friendly Salute: International Football In The 1930s -- 4. The Warm Back Of Eddy Hamel: An American In Amsterdam And Birkenau -- 5. The Lost Memories Of Meijer Stad -- 6. Sparta: A Football Club In Wartime -- 7. Boom: The Rise Of Football In The Occupied Netherlands -- 8. Strange Lies: Ajax, World War Ii And P. G. Wodehouse -- 9. Captain Of France, Collaborator In Gorcum: Soccer And The Annals Of Resistance -- 10. The Netherlands Was Better Than The Rest -- 11. Soldier Heroes: British And German Soccer In The War (and Long After) -- 12. Of Bunkers And Cigars: The Holocaust And The Making Of The Great Ajax -- 13. The Most Popular Team In Israel -- 14. Football Songs Of The Netherlands -- Disneytown And The Secret Monuments. Simon Kuper. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 259-264) And Index.

Sir Alex Ferguson's compelling story is always honest and revealing he reflects on his managerial career that embraced unprecedented European success for Aberdeen and 26 triumphant seasons with Manchester United.Sir Alex Ferguson's best-selling autobiography has now been updated to offer reflections on events at Manchester United since his retirement as well as his teachings at the Harvard Business School, a night at the Oscars and a boat tour round the Hebrides, where he passed unrecognised.The extra material adds fresh insights and detail on his final years as United's manager.Both the psychology of management and the detail of football strategy at the top level can be complex matters but no-one has explained them in a more interesting and accessible way for the general reader than Sir Alex does here.MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY is revealing, endlessly entertaining and above all inspirational.

An absolutely essential book for every modern football fan, about the development of Premier League tactics, published to coincide with 25 years of the competition.Back in 1992, English football was stuck in the dark ages, emerging from a five-year ban from European competition. The game was physical, bruising and attritional, based on strength over speed, aggression over finesse. It was the era of the midfield general, reducers, big men up front and getting it in the mixer; 4-4-2 was the order of the day. Few teams experimented tactically.And then, almost overnight, it all changed. The creation of the Premier League coincided with one of the most seismic rule changes in football history: the abolition of the back-pass. Suddenly defenders had no-get-out-of-jail-free card, goalkeepers had to be able to field and play the ball and the pace of the game quickened immeasurably. Tactics evolved dramatically, helped by an increased foreign influence.The Mixer is the first book to delve deep into the tactical story of the Premier League, and take a long view of how the game has developed over the last quarter century. From Ferguson’s directness to Keegan’s relentlessly attacking Newcastle outfit, to Mourinho’s cagey, reactive Chelsea, all the way to Ranieri’s counter-attacking champions, The Mixer is one of the most entertaining, rich and knowledgeable football books ever written.

"An outstanding work the [soccer] book of the decade." -- Sunday Business PostInverting the Pyramid is a pioneering soccer book that chronicles the evolution of soccer tactics and the lives of the itinerant coaching geniuses who have spread their distinctive styles across the globe.Through Jonathan Wilson's brilliant historical detective work we learn how the South Americans shrugged off the British colonial order to add their own finesse to the game; how the Europeans harnessed individual technique and built it into a team structure; how the game once featured five forwards up front, while now a lone striker is not uncommon.Inverting the Pyramid provides a definitive understanding of the tactical genius of modern-day Barcelona, for the first time showing how their style of play developed from Dutch "Total Football," which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park in the 1870s and taken on by Tottenham Hotspur in the 1930s. Inverting the Pyramid has been called the "Big Daddy" (Zonal Marking) of soccer tactics books; it is essential for any coach, fan, player, or fantasy manager of the beautiful game.

Master storyteller Joe McGinniss travels to Italy to cover the unlikely success of a ragtag minor league soccer team—and delivers a brilliant and utterly unforgettable story of life in an off-the-beaten-track Italian village.When Joe McGinniss sets out for the remote Italian village of Castel di Sangro one summer, he merely intends to spend a season with the village's soccer team, which only weeks before had, miraculously, reached the second-highest-ranking professional league in the land. But soon he finds himself embroiled with an absurd yet irresistible cast of characters, including the team's owner, described by the New York Times as "straight out of a Mario Puzo novel," and coach Osvaldo Jaconi, whose only English word is the one he uses to describe himself: "bulldozer."  As the riotous, edge-of-your-seat season unfolds, McGinniss develops a deepening bond with the team, their village and its people, and their country. Traveling with the miracle team, from the isolated mountain region where Castel di Sangro is located to gritty towns as well as grand cities, McGinniss introduces us to an Italy that no tourist guidebook has ever described, and comes away with a "sad, funny, desolating, and inspiring story—everything, in fact, a story should be" (Los Angeles Times). George O'Brien In The Miracle of Castel di Sangro , Joe McGinniss tells the story of his year living among and observing the soccer team from tiny Castel di Sangro, Italy, population 5,000. In the years preceding his arrival, this Cinderella team climbed its way up through the highly structured ranks of Italy's national soccer leagues, from amateur dilletanti to professional Serie B. That put them just one step away from the fabled Serie A, the greatest soccer league in the world. Imagine a recreational baseball team from Freehold, New Jersey, finding themselves playing in the major leagues, and you'll have some idea of the improbability. And this is all in the first chapter. How does an American writer, perhaps best known for The Selling of the President 1968 and Fatal Vision , get sent to Italy to write a book? About a soccer team? In a tiny mountain village in the poorest part of the country? This is surely part of the miracle, too. McGinniss was so excited by World Cup '94, the first ever held in the United States, that he caught soccer fever and never lost it. Quenching his natural reporter's thirst for facts and information, he began reading everything he could about soccer, seeing games when in Europe, and immersing himself in the history and lore of the world's most popular game. McGinniss maneuvers the reader gracefully and succinctly through its rules and history in general, as well as the specifics of the Italian passion for il calcio. So if you're a newcomer to the sport, don't worry -- you'll learn plenty without getting too distracted from the heart of the story. As important as the X's and O's may be, the true allure of this book comes from the characters who populate both the team and the town. In Italy, soccer is -- along with food, cigarettes, cell phones, the Renaissance, and the Pope -- one of the true essentials of daily life. For the people of a town as isolated and small as Castel di Sangro, none of these elements seems to exist without the others. And for one year, Joe McGinniss lived with them, learned their language, shopped at their markets, and joined their beloved team for every wonderful meal and long bus ride, every heroic victory or agonizing loss. Along the way, he describes a hilarious and endearing cast of characters. There's Barbara, the beautiful translator who shows him around in his first few weeks, before he speaks any Italian; Signore Gabriele Gravini, the team president; his boss and team owner, Signor Rezza, whose financial control of the team seems to disguise many other "interests"; Osvaldo Jaconi, the thick-necked, veteran coach who knows only one word of English, "bulldozer"; and, of course, the players. The players are something of a little family in their own right. Some are from Castel di Sangro and have played with the team since it was just a group of amateurs. Others are newcomers: young ones forced to prove themselves in the "minor leagues" before moving on to bigger and better teams, stadiums, and towns; and older ones, whose careers peaked long before the top, who see Castel di Sangro as their last chance to put food on the table playing the game they love. No matter their history or future, the players are like brothers. Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they argue, but they are always together. My favorite scenes in the book are the dinners among the players. All the unmarried players (which means most of the team), Coach Jaconi, and "il famoso scittori americano," Joe McGinniss, eat together at Marcella's, the only restaurant in town. This passage describing the restaurant gives a glimpse of the intimacy of life in Castel di Sangro: The same thirteen or fourteen men would gather twice a day, five days a week, at the same long, rectangular table next to the kitchen, eating the same food and hearing the rasp of Jaconi's voice week after week from September to June... Yet because of Marcella -- her spontaneity, her capacity for empathy, her innate warmth -- even the married players would bring their wives and children for dinner every week. And Gravine would regularly host large parties for family, business associates, and friends. Laundry was dropped off and picked up at Marcella's. Mail for players was delivered to Marcella's... Romances bloomed, withered, died and were reborn on her pay phone. Not to mention the dozen or so cell phones that were in use on her premises at any given time, day or night. This is not just a sports book, written by a historian from the stands or by a retired hero who made the moments happen. It's a book about Castel di Sangro, the team and the town, and about Joe McGinniss. As his Italian develops during the season, so too do his appreciation of the game and his love for the players. With every passing game, McGinniss's passions oscillate higher and lower, his gesticulations get wilder and wilder, until he could almost be mistaken for an Italian soccer fan. For Americans who love this great game, undernourished by the lack of appreciation of it in our country, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro is the sweetest nectar. For anyone who likes a good sports story but has never understood why soccer has the power to drive billions of people around the world into paroxysms of ecstasy and agony, this real-life fable will be a revelation. In any case, there has never been a book quite like it. --George O'Brien

For the first time, Paddy Agnew lifts the lid on Italian football, reflecting on 20 years of Italian living through "calcio"—the native word for all things football. When he and his girlfriend Dympna touched down in Rome in 1985, in search of adventure, sunshine, and the soul of Italian football (well, Paddy was looking for that), they were traveling into the uncharted terrain of a country they did not know and a language they did not speak. It soon became clear that neither Italy nor Italian football would be boring. In that first week in Italy, Michel Platini and Juventus won the Intercontinental Cup, whilst just days later the PLO killed 13 people in a random shooting at Rome's Fiumicino airport. Paddy covered both stories. Within two months of Paddy's arrival, TV tycoon Silvio Berlusconi bought debt-ridden AC Milan. Enmeshing the people's love of football with his own political ambitions, Berlusconi was to propel himself all the way to the Prime Minister's office. Berlusconi named his political party "Forza Italia" after a football chant, while the party MPs were known as the "azzurri," just like Italian international footballers. In that same period, Argentine Diego Maradona was the uncrowned King of Naples, leading Napoli to a first ever scudetto title in 1987, not withstanding a hectic, Hollywood-type lifestyle that mixed footballing genius with bad company of the organized criminal type. From Maradona to Shevchenko and from Platini to Totti, this is a fascinating tale of inspired players, skilled coaches, rich tycoons, glitzy media coverage, Mafia corruption, drug scandals, and fan power. It is also a personalized reflection on the consistent and continuingexcellence of Italian football throughout a period of huge social, political, and economic upheaval.