When Jurgen Klopp was appointed Liverpool manager in October 2015, the world took notice, and Reds fans were united in optimism for the first time in years. The charismatic German eventually took the club to European and world success, but the foundations were laid in his first two years at Anfield, and Kloppite (first published in 2017 and updated in 2020) explores how the bespectacled coach set about reigniting the LFC flame in that period - not only trying to change the fortunes of the once-dominant club, but also making the people believe again. After his successes at Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, Klopp left Germany to take on his greatest challenge as he sought to return the Merseysiders to the summit of English and European football. The hot-seat at Anfield has often been described as one of the toughest jobs in football, and Klopp was tasked with overcoming the adversity of fan expectations, competing against some of the game's best managers and biggest spenders, and turning doubters into believers.

Winner of the An Post Irish Sports Book of the Year Award Longlisted for The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 'Not only the sports book of the year, the book of the year.' Paul Howard 'Unputdownable,' The Last Word, Today FM 'You'll go a long way to find a better autobiography. It's raw, unfiltered honesty from start to finish, a captivating account of one man's story that will resonate with so many more.' The Irish Independent 'The bravest book I've read in a long time. A really quality read written by a man who happened to be a footballer rather than a book necessarily about football.' Damien O'Meara, RTE 'Storytelling of the highest calibre. Richie Sadlier's autobiography is a judiciously layered and thoughtful examination of how to live a life and develop as a person despite everything. It's also relentlessly entertaining. A rare and precious example of a sports book that has both story and stories in abundance.' Malachy Clerkin, The Irish Times 'The kind of book to stop you in your tracks.' The Irish Farmers Journal When a career-ending injury saw former Ireland and Millwall striker Richie Sadlier retire from football at age 24, his life spiraled out of control. Without structure or a sense of purpose, and fueled by a dependency on alcohol, he spent years running from the dark memories and feelings that had haunted him since childhood. Until one day, he hit rock bottom and decided to confront his demons. Now a successful soccer pundit, psychotherapist and mental-fitness teacher, Recovering is about a life shaped by efforts to escape, and how it is possible to rebuild a life, piece by piece, with the right help. Inspiring and groundbreaking, it is an important reflection on the need to move away from perceptions of shame in our discussions about mental health, sex, relationships and addiction.

An anecdote-driven narrative of the classic footballer's DOs and DO NOTs from the ever-popular Arsenal legend and football pundit Paul Merson, aka The Merse .

When it comes to advice on the pitfalls of life as a professional footballer, Paul Merson can pretty much write the manual. In fact, that's exactly what he's done in this hilarious new book which manages to be simultaneously poignant and gloriously funny.

Merson was a prodigiously talented footballer in the 80s and 90s, gracing the upper echelons of the game - and the tabloid front pages - with his breathtakingly skills and larger-than-life off-field persona.

His much-publicised battles with gambling, drug and alcohol addiction are behind him now, and football fans continue to be drawn to his sharp footballing brain and playful antics on SkySports cult results show Soccer Saturday.

The book delights and entertains with a treasure chest of terrific anecdotes from a man who has never lost his love of football and his inimitable joie de vivre through a 25-year association with the Beautiful Game.

The DO NOTs include: DO NOT adopt 'Champagne' Charlie Nicholas as your mentorDO NOT share a house with GazzaDO NOT regularly place 30,000 bets at the bookie'sDO NOT get so drunk that you can't remember the 90 minutes of football you just played inDO NOT manage Walsall (at any cost)

How Not to be a Professional Footballer is a hugely entertaining, moving and laugh-out-loud funny story."

An excellent recap, with wonderful access and forensic detail on the Premier League's rise to global alpha status... All told with an arch sense of humour The Guardian How did English football - once known for its stale pies, bad book-keeping and hooligans - become a commercial powerhouse and the world's premium popular entertainment? This was a business empire built in only twenty-five years on ambition, experimentation and gambler's luck. Lead by a motley cast of executives, Russian oligarchs, Arab Sheikhs, Asian Titans, American Tycoons, battle-hardened managers, ruthless agents and the Murdoch media - the Premier League has been carved up, rebranded and exported to phenomenal 185 countries. The United Nations only recognizes 193. But the extraordinary profit of bringing England's ageing industrial towns to a compulsive global attention has come at a cost. Today, as players are sold for hundreds of millions and clubs are valued in the billions, local fans are being priced out - and the clubs' local identities are fading. The Premier League has become the classic business fable for our globalised world. Drawing on dozens of exclusive and revelatory interviews from the Boardrooms - including Liverpool's John W. Henry, Tottenham's Daniel Levy, Martin Edwards and David Gill at Manchester United, Arsene Wenger and Stan Kroenke at Arsenal, Manchester City's sporting director Txiki Begiristain, and executives at Chelsea, West Ham, Leicester City and Aston Villa - this is the definitive bustand boom account of how the Premier League product took over the world.

'How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson is an insightful and interesting book packed with leadership ideas and real life examples taken from the cutting edge of sport that apply in leading any top team or business. I would recommend this book to anyone, especially those currently in leadership positions and those aspiring to get there, as Damian Hughes draws out the inspirational qualities required from one of the greatest managers in football.' Stuart Lancaster, England Head Coach, Rugby Football Union In How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson, Professor Damian Hughes distils the primary lessons of Ferguson's phenomenal success as manager at Manchester United and show how you can apply them to you own personal goals. You will learn about Ferguson's approach to people-management, changing mind-sets, visualisation, building confidence and embracing change - all techniques at the heart of turning Manchester United into a winning machine. You will also discover how he remained at the forefront of one of the world's most competitive industries and how to make this count with your own ambition. You will also discover the techniques that Ferguson employed to extract the finest qualities from his team, and discover how to lead other individuals and teams in their pursuit of success within changing times. With exercises for you to work on, drawing from Professor Hughes's practical and academic background within sport, organisation and change psychology, How to Think Like Sir Alex Ferguson is the perfect handbook for the business of winning and managing success.

Tortured: The Sam English Story is the fascinating yet tragic tale of a footballer destined to become one of the greatest goalscorers in Scottish football history, but who by his own admission became 'an embarrassing, grizzly peep show'. English was a veritable goal machine at Yoker Athletic in the late 1920s, netting nearly 300 in three seasons, and was soon being chased by a posse of big-name clubs. Legendary Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman offered him a blank cheque, but 22-year-old English chose Rangers. He hit 44 league goals in his debut season - still a record today - but tragedy struck early in the campaign. In the first Old Firm match of the season, Celtic keeper John Thomson lost his life after bravely diving at the feet of the entirely blameless English. In an instant, English became one half of a tragic accident and his life changed forever. He moved to Liverpool, but was haunted by the fatality and its accompanying demons. He was cast as a villain and made a pariah. His life would be defined by that one tragic incident.

'The dream was football . . .' John Giles had a gift. At the age of three, he could kick a ball the way it was supposed to be kicked. And he knew that every hour that passed without kicking a ball was an hour wasted. 'It was the same dream that most of the kids had at that time . . .' In A Football Man, Giles tells the story of a dream pursued and realised beyond his wildest imaginings, from his humble beginnings in Ormond Square in 1940s' Dublin,counting down the minutes to his next game of football, to that unforgettable moment when the original football man - his dad, 'Dickie' - announced that his young son, at just fourteen, was on his way to Manchester United. 'What I didn't realise was that my dream would come true.' Full of anecdote, insight and wry humour, Giles recounts his rise through the ranks at Manchester United, before and after the Munich Disaster; the great players he knew, the good and the bad times under Matt Busby; his sensational debut for Ireland which he served as player and manager; his starring role in the brilliant, controversial Leeds United of the '60s and '70s; and his challenge to the portrayal of himself and Brian Clough in The Damned United. He also describes his enduring friendship with the 'kid from across Dublin's Tolka Park', Eamon Dunphy, and his career on RTE2's football panel, where Giles' intelligent and insightful analysis have made him an even more well-loved and respected national figure.

The global Black Lives Matter campaign has given greater exposure to the extent and insidious nature of the structural and systemic racism that exists in all strata of our society and has provided renewed impetus to the urgent need to challenge and eradicate racism in all its forms and wherever it is found. Sadly, sport has not been immune from this, especially so in the case of football. For too long, there were attempts to hide and mitigate racist attitudes and actions within the game, but thanks to the growing profile and visibility of black and minority ethnic (BAME) players both past and present - Viv Anderson, Cyrille Regis, Jimmy Carter, Les Ferdinand, Pat Nevin and Ruud Gullit to name just a few - and almost three decades of education and campaigning led by Kick It Out, attitudes have changed. However, now is not the time to be complacent - there's still a great deal left to do. Throughout his entire journalistic career, leading sportswriter Harry Harris has championed the fight against racism in football. Now, within these pages, he shines a timely spotlight on the Beautiful Game, revealing the forces within football that have both helped expose and challenge racism - and, at times, sadly, hinder more rapid positive change. Over the years, Harris has gathered an impressively large network of contacts within the game - players, managers, media pundits and association personnel among them. Many of them, such as Greg Dyke, Glenn Hoddle, Ivor Baddiel, Mek Stein, and Jermain Defoe, have spoken exclusively to Harris for this book. Red Card to Racism is not only a welcome addition to the ongoing debate surrounding ending prejudice within football but also a timely and necessary addition to the wider discussion of the need within our evermore global multicultural society for all people, whatever their beliefs, gender, identity, sexuality or ethnic background, to be treated with equity, humanity and respect.

Football has never seemed so distant from its fans. Many have been alienated by the greed and shameless self-interest of the Premier League, and no one can predict how the global game will look post-pandemic. In Whose Game Is It Anyway?, Sunday Times best-selling author Michael Calvin searches for a reason to believe. Written at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, the book is a thought-provoking, deeply personal account of the role sport - and particularly football - plays in everyday life. Part memoir, part manifesto, it takes the reader on a tour of the world's greatest sporting occasions and into its outposts in sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazon Basin and the Southern Ocean. Drawn from Calvin's experience as an award-winning sportswriter, covering every major sports event over 40 years in more than 80 countries, it offers first-hand insight into such icons as Muhammad Ali, Maradona and Sir Bobby Charlton. With settings ranging from a jungle clearing to a township in apartheid South Africa, this is sport as you've never seen it before.

The 1960s heralded a golden age of players who wore the dark blue of Scotland. Law, Gilzean, Baxter, Greig and Johnstone are just some of the names still familiar to supporters today. Bookended by heavy defeats against the Auld Enemy, the decade witnessed just one other defeat in the annual fixture against England and contained both the most-celebrated and horrific of Wembley encounters. The '60s also included a brief spell with Jock Stein as manager and the only Scotland international to date to be decided in extra time. Valiant but ultimately failed World Cup campaigns included memorable matches against Italy, West Germany and Czechoslovakia; an embarrassing loss to the amateurs of Norway was offset by a six-goal spree in Spain a matter of days later. Set against the backdrop of the Swinging Sixties, Scotland in the 60s looks at each of the 64 matches played by the national side during the period and the consequences of those results. Extensive newspaper and video archive research is complemented by the memories of the players who took part and the reminiscences of supporters and journalists who were there.

Sport in East Germany is commonly associated with the systematic doping that helped to make the country an Olympic superpower. Football played little part in this controversial story. Yet, as a hugely popular activity that was deeply entwined in the social fabric, it exerted an influence that few institutions or pursuits could match. The People's Game examines the history of football from the interrelated perspectives of star players, fans, and ordinary citizens who played for fun. Using archival sources and interviews, it reveals football's fluid role in preserving and challenging communist hegemony. By repeatedly emphasising that GDR football was part of an international story, for example, through analysis of the 1974 World Cup finals, Alan McDougall shows how sport transcended the Iron Curtain. Through a study of the mass protests against the Stasi team, BFC, during the 1980s, he reveals football's role in foreshadowing the downfall of communism.

This is the ultimate quiz book on Coventry City Football Club. The perfect gift for Sky Blues fans of all ages, it is sure to brighten up long match-day journeys and provide some entertaining trips down memory lane. From the earliest days of Singers FC, to the glory-filled promotion years under Jimmy Hill, from cup calamities to winning at Wembley, and from the thirty four unbroken years of top-flight football to recent relegations, all Coventry City topics are covered here. This book will test your knowledge of all shades of Sky Blue history. If you know it, or think you know it, check it out here and settle your Sky Blue scores.

Got, Not Got: The Lost World of Leeds United is an Aladdin's cave of memories and memorabilia, guaranteed to whisk you back to Elland Road's fondly remembered 'Golden Age' of mud and magic - as well as a Whites-mad childhood of miniature tabletop games and imaginary, comic-fuelled worlds. The book recalls a more innocent era of football, lingering longingly over relics from the good old days - United stickers and petrol freebies, league ladders, records, big-match programmes and much more - revisiting lost football culture, treasures and pleasures that are 100 per cent Leeds. If you were a Junior White, one of the army of obsessive soccer kids at any time from Don Revie's lads first lifting the title to the '91 championship, then this is the book to recall the mavericks - Bremner and Giles, Gray and Currie, Sheridan and Strachan - and the marvels of the Lost World of Football.

Football is the world's most popular sport. It is a cultural phenomenon and a global media spectacle. For its billions of fans, it serves as a common language. But where does its enduring popularity come from? Featuring essays from prominent experts in the field, scholars and journalists, this Companion covers ground seldom attempted in a single volume about football. It examines the game's oft-disputed roots and traces its development through Europe, South America and Africa, analysing whether resistance to the game is finally beginning to erode in China, India and the United States. It dissects the cult of the manager and how David Beckham redefined sporting celebrity. It investigates the game's followers, reporters and writers, as well as its most zealous money makers and powerful administrators. A valuable resource for students, scholars and general readers, The Cambridge Companion to Football is a true and faithful companion for anyone fascinated by the people's game.

Here is the ultimate quiz book on Scotland's national team. Informative and fun, this is the perfect companion for those long car journeys to Inverness or Aberdeen, or for nights down the local. An ideal gift for Tartan fans of all ages, here's the chance to test fellow supporters on World Cups, famous games against England, favourite managers and cult heroes, including R.S. McColl, Jimmy Quinn, Jimmy McGrory and Kenny Dalglish. Cryptic to convivial, get your Tartan thinking caps on - it's quiz time!

'A must-have' - The Telegraph 'Book of the Week' - The Independent 'Hilarious' - Sport Magazine In what other context do football fans use the words 'aplomb' or 'derisory'? Why don't we use 'rifle' as a verb on the other six days of the week? Why do aggrieved midfielders feel the instinctive need to make a giant ball-shaped gesture with both hands after a mistimed tackle is punished? The more football Adam Hurrey watched, the more he began to spot the recurring mannerisms, behaviours, opinions and iconography that were mindlessly repeated in the football media. Some cliches are ridiculous, some are quaintly outdated, some have survived through their sheer indisputability. Here, featuring gloriously pseudo-scientific diagrams and the inimitable writing style that made footballcliches.com a smash hit, they are covered in all their glory.

On January 6, 1975, Nottingham Forest were thirteenth in the old Second Division, five points above the relegation places and straying dangerously close to establishing a permanent place for themselves among football's nowhere men. Within five years Brian Clough had turned an unfashionable and depressed club into the kings of Europe, beating everyone in their way and knocking Liverpool off their perch long before Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United had the same idea. This is the story of the epic five-year journey that saw Forest complete a real football miracle and Clough brilliantly restore his reputation after his infamous 44-day spell at Leeds United. 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.

You can see them, but you don't know them. Ultras are football fans like no others. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time. 1312: Among the Ultras tells the story of how the movement began and how it grew to become the global phenomenon that now dominates the stadiums from the Balkans and Buenos Aires. With unprecedented insider access, the book investigates how ultras have grown into a fiercely political movement, embracing extremes on both the left and right; fighting against the commercialisation of football and society - and against the attempts to control them by the authorities, who both covet and fear their power.

This work explores the key issues of racism, anti-racism and identity in British football. It relates the history of black players in the game, analyzes the racism they have experienced, and evaluates the efficacy of anti-racist campaigns. The efficacy of the policing of racism is also asses sed. The nationalism and xenophobia evident in much of the media's coverage of major tournaments is highlighted in the context of the way that English, Scottish and Welsh identities are constructed within British football.

After a trophy-laden and record-setting club and international career, England's greatest ever goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, could rightly look forward to an equally successful post-playing career. But a gambling habit forged in his playing days soon spiralled into a gambling addiction: a silent, self-destructive and ruinous obsession that destroyed relationships, his mental health and very nearly himself. With the love and support of his wife Steph, he was able to face up to his addiction, find hope for the future and overcome his 45-year secret and turn his life around. Peter and Steph - who has over 20 years' experience working in the NHS - now campaign to raise awareness of this, and other destructive addictions, helping both addicts and their partners weather the long and arduous journey back to recovery. Their support for and work with 'The Big Step' campaign aims to bring in stricter advertising controls and team kit sponsorship rules. Steph and Peter bravely tell both sides of their journey with a direct honesty and an empathy born of real-life experience, offering advice and hope to not only those affected by gambling, but sufferers of other chronic addictions. They also shine a light on football's obsession with gambling, taking millions of pounds from the gambling sites and bookies who sponsor the game, while neglecting to support both the players and fans who fall prey to addiction. This is the ultimately uplifting story of how he was saved - by Steph's love and support, and his own strength and determination.

Team Sports Training: The Complexity Model presents a novel approach to team sports training, examining football (soccer), rugby union, field hockey, basketball, handball and futsal through the paradigm of complexity. Under a traditional prism, these sports have been analysed using a deterministic perspective, where the constituent dimensions of the sportsmen were independently examined and treated in isolation. It was expected that the body worked as a perfect machine and, once all the components were maximised, the sportsmen improved their performance. If the same closed recipe was applied to all of the players who formed part of the squad, the global team performance was expected to be enhanced. As much as these reductionist models seem coherent, when contrasted in practice we see that the reality of team sports is far more different from the closed conditions in which they were idealised. Team sports contain variable, heterogeneous and non-linear constraints which require the development of a different logic to organise their training. During the last few years, ecological psychology, the dynamical systems theory or the constraints-led approach have opened interesting fields of research from which many conceptual foundations can be applied to team sports. Based on this contemporary framework, the current book presents the study of the players and the teams as complex systems, using coordination dynamics to explain the emergence of the self-organisation episodes that characterise them. In addition, this thinking line provides the reader with the ability to apply all of these innovative concepts to their practical training scenarios. Altogether, it is intended to challenge the reader to re-think their training strategy and to develop an original theory and practice of training specific to team sports.