Now in its fourth edition, The World Cup: The Complete History, is the only book to give a truly encyclopedic guide to the greatest football show on earth. Fully revised and updated in time for the 2014 finals in Brazil, the book is renowned for its remarkable comprehensiveness. Featuring a separate chapter for every competition; every single result of every match; every single player in every team; all qualifying details; and a detailed round-up of the entire progress of each tournament, ...

The definitive book about soccer, from the author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics.There may be no cultural practice more global than soccer. Rites of birth and marriage are infinitely diverse, but the rules of soccer are universal. No world religion can match its geographical scope. The single greatest simultaneous human collective experience is the World Cup final.In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full s...

GOOOAAAAAL! Get ready for a front-row seat at the world's most-watched sporting event--the World Cup.Every four years, thirty-two of the best men's soccer teams from across the globe compete for the title of FIFA World Cup winner. Over one billion people tuned in worldwide to watch the final game of the 2014 competition, making the World Cup the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Summer Olympics! This book takes a look back at what h...

Soccer is much more than just the most popular game in the world. It is a matter of life and death for millions around the world, an international lingua franca. Simon Kuper traveled to twenty-two countries to discover the sometimes bizarre effect soccer can have on politics and culture. At the same time he tried to discover what makes different countries play a simple game so differently. Kuper meets a remarkable variety of fans along the way, from the East Berliner persecuted by the Stas...

In 'The World Cup, A Very Peculiar History', author David Arscott tackles the big subjects at the heart of the beautiful game, including how the tournament first kicked off, the dirty tactics used throughout the years and the most memorable managers in the history of football. Filled to the brim with quirky quotes, fantastic facts and surprising statistics, this is the perfect accompaniment to any post-match celebration (or commiseration!) during the season. At its heart 'The World Cup, A ...

As the world’s eyes turn to the World Cup every four years, Aleksandar Hemon's The Matters of Life, Death, and More reminds us of a sad fact: “an average life seldom contains more than twenty World Cups—our games are tragically numbered.”We need to pay attention, to absorb the joy, the skill, the agony, the triumph, the beauty—everything that soccer is. And soccer is, of course, everything.In these pages, Hemon revisits memories of his first World ...

An all-encompassing, chronological guide to football's World Cup, one of the world's few truly international events, in good time for the June 2018 kick-off in Russia. From its beginnings in 1930 to the modern all-singing, all-dancing self-styled 'greatest show on Earth', every tournament is covered with features on major stars and great games, as well as stories about some less celebrated names and quirky stats and intriguing essays.Holt's focus is very much on what takes place on...

Foreword by Arsene Wenger, Introduction by David BeckhamSoccer writer and bestselling author of My Side, Tom Watt, talked to the world's top soccer players about growing up and falling in love with the game: Argentina's Lionel Messi and Brazil's Gilberto Silva; England's David James and Scotland's Craig Gordon; Italy's Fabio Cannavaro, Spain's Iker Casillas, and France's Franck Ribéry; South Africa's Benni McCarthy and Nigeria's Nwankwo Kanu; USA's Landon Donovan and Japan's Shunsu...

WINNER OF THE FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDSA brilliant book - Rory SmithThe story of the immense struggle to qualify for the World Cup, Thirty-One Nil roams from American Samoa to Zambia in a remarkable and insightful journey that gets under the skin of world football.In a tiny, decaying aluminium smelting town in southern Tajikistan, a short drive from a raging war zone, Afgha...

Although it assumes different monikers in various parts of the world and has appeared in various incarnations over time, the game of soccer has retained a great deal of its original character. While it is ostensibly simple in terms of equipment and rules, soccer has inspired skill, strategy, and pure athleticism that have allowed the professional sport to evolve. The history of soccer and the biographies of game-changing players who have kept fans riveted game after game are chronicled in ...

Italia '90 was the best and worst of World Cups. It made a global star of England's inspirational Paul Gascoigne and gave fresh confidence to English football but it was also the lowest- scoring of all World Cups, leading directly to the back-pass ban that transformed the sport. World In Motion travels from Africa to South America, via Europe and the Middle East, to hear from the protagonists of Italia '90 and find out why it is still seen as a special and transformative moment, not just i...

There is no sporting event more popular than the World Cup. For one month every four years, billions of people around the world turn their attention to the tournament. Fans call in sick to work, pack into bars to watch games, or stay home for days at a time glued to their TV sets. Nothing else seems to matter.In A History of the World Cup: 1930-2014, Clemente A. Lisi chronicles this international phenomenon, providing vivid accounts of individual games from the tournament's origins...