*** SHORTLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH'S 2021 SPORTS BOOK AWARDS - INTERNATIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR 'One of the best football books I've read for a very long time.' - Sam Pilger, FourFourTwo Magazine 'An extraordinary, granular depiction of a young football star's life.' - The Daily Mail 'An excellent read with some incredible stories.' - TalkSPORT Breakfast Show Known as 'Lord Bendtner' to his fans and haters alike, Nicklas Bendtner has been lauded for his football skills at super clubs like Arsenal and Juventus. But his career has been haunted by his rocky behaviour and tendency to self-sabotage. In this disarmingly honest memoir, Bendtner talks about the darker side of football and his own difficult fall from grace; about what it's like to have so much promise that you lose touch with reality altogether. It's is about growing up in a working-class neighbourhood and fighting to reach the top in the worlds' toughest league. It's about friendship, rivalry, and the constant quest for an adrenaline kick. It's about money and what happens when you give a troubled, overconfident teen millions to spend. It's about an industry that has lost sight of what really matters. A modern footballing fable, it's a story of decline, temper, talent, great football and ultimately the tragedy of unfulfilled potential. Not since the days of Paul McGrath's Back From The Brink have we seen such honesty on the page of a footballer's memoir. Fans of Paul Merson, George Best and Tony Adam's autobiographies will also find pure fascination here in a story that has gripped international readers...

A Social History of Indian Football covers the period 1850-2004. It considers soccer as a derivative sport, creatively and imaginatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs - designed to fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. The book is concerned with the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of sporting ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist needs. The book assesses the role of soccer in colonial Indian life, to delineate the inter-relationship between those who patronised, promoted, played and viewed the game, to analyse the impact of the colonial context on the games evolution and development and shed light on the diverse nature of trysts with the sport across the country. Throughout this book, soccer is the lens that illuminates India's colonial and post-colonial encounter. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Soccer and Society.

In 1973-74, Britain was in meltdown. The Arab-Israeli War had sent energy prices soaring. Petrol was scarce. Offices were limited to a temperature of 17C and power cuts were frequent. A three-day working week came in as inflation took hold and miners and other workers went on strike. The northern mill town of Rochdale suffered more than most. Its cotton industry was on shut-down in the face of cheap imports, and the football team was a mirror image of the town - tired, defeated, clinging to life. The Rochdale team of 1973-74 are considered the worst to play in the Football League. They finished bottom of the third division, winning just twice in 46 league matches. They closed the season with a 22-game winless run and played one home match in front of the lowest-ever post-war crowd. That season 32 players played for the team, many of them drafted in from amateur or Sunday league clubs. The Longest Winter is as much a piece of forensic social history as it is a sports book. It evokes the smells, textures and moods of the early 1970s.

The long-awaited memoir from international football ambassador, former co-owner of Arsenal FC and legend of the game: David Dein. There's no doubt that Dein has been one of the most significant and influential figures in British football for over three decades - operating at club and international level. He was a prime mover in the creation of the Premier League, hugely influential within the England set-up and, of course, was the mastermind - along with Arsene Wenger - in creating the glory days of Arsenal Football Club, leading the team for almost a quarter of a century. Connected to the most senior figures across the global game as a friend, rival, advisor, and collaborator, Dein has been central to major turning points in the game. Calling the Shots is part memoir, part inspirational meditation on leadership, teamwork and how to invest in people. It tracks the full story of David's remarkable life and career to date, recounting never-before-told stories from the inside, intriguing characters met along the way, and discussing the past, present and future of football. An entertaining and motivational read for football and non-football fans alike, Calling the Shots is a dynamic masterclass in how to succeed in business and life.

In 1960, at the start of a tumultuous decade that saw major global change, the Intercontinental Cup was born. For the first time, this ambitious annual cup crowned a world club champion, pitting the kings of the two great footballing continents - Europe and South America - against each other. In an era before money ruined the global balance of football, neither dominated. From the Estadio Centenario and the Maracana, to Old Trafford and the San Siro, the most iconic stadia in world football hosted Intercontinental Cup games. The star players of their respective generations participated - from Puskas and Di Stefano in the inaugural 1960 edition, to legends such as Pele, Ronaldo, Zico and van Basten. When Two Worlds Collide charts the Intercontinental Cup's colourful 44-year history, from its trailblazing inception to 2004 when the last ball was kicked in Yokohama. The controversial clashes of the late 1960s, the cup's decline in the 70s and the pivotal 1980 rebirth in Japan are all covered.

Strength and power are key elements of soccer performance. A stronger player can sprint faster, jump higher, change direction more quickly and kick the ball harder. Strength Training for Soccer introduces the science of strength training for soccer. Working from a sound evidence-base, it explains how to develop a training routine that integrates the different components of soccer performance, including strength, speed, coordination and flexibility, and outlines modern periodization strategies that keep players closer to their peak over an extended period. Dealing with themes of injury prevention, rehabilitation and interventions, as well as performance, the book offers a uniquely focused guide to the principles of strength and conditioning in a footballing context. Fully referenced, and full of practical drills, detailed exercise descriptions, training schedules and year plans, Strength Training for Soccer is essential reading for all strength and conditioning students and any coach or trainer working in football.

In December 2020, an Israeli football club made worldwide headlines. The news that a UAE royal had bought 50 per cent of Beitar's shares shook Israel and the football world. Beitar, proclaimed by some of its own fans as 'the most racist club in the country', is a club like no other in Israel. While Israeli football as a whole is a space where Israelis of all ethnicities and foreigners can co-exist, Beitar won't even sign a Muslim player for fear of its own far-right supporters' group, La Familia. On the Border is the fascinating tale of a club that began as a sports movement of a liberal national Zionism party and became an overt symbol of right-wing views, Mizrahi identity and eventually hardcore racism and nationalism. The book explores the radicalisation of Beitar and the fight for the soul of the club between the racists and open-minded fans. It is also a story of Jerusalem, the most volatile place on Earth, and how the holy city and the influence of religion have shaped Beitar.

The Working Hands of a Goddess is the story of how Atalanta BC rose from the lower reaches of Serie A to become Champions League quarter-finalists in just four years. The appointment of Gian Piero Gasperini as manager in 2016 changed the club's fortunes forever. Quickly making his mark, he developed a squad that play one of Europe's most scintillating brands of football, and upset the status quo by going toe-to-toe with the giants of the Italian game. The Working Hands of a Goddess analyses and details the tactics and systems that underpin this thrilling team, the stories and backgrounds of the unique players that define it, and the culture and history that not only produced a beautiful football team but a special club and city-wide community. When the pandemic rocked the community, Atalanta became far more than just a football team by uniting a city in strife.

Andres Iniesta is the Barcelona and Spain legend, rated by the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Paul Scholes as one of the greatest footballers of all time. This is the thinking fan's footballer with a thinking fan's football book. Andres Iniesta was twelve years old when scouts invited him into Barcelona's famous La Masia academy. Shortly after he joined the club, Barca legend Pep Guardiola remarked of him, 'This lad is going to retire us all.' Iniesta rapidly became a permanent fixture in the Barca midfield, propelling the club to a raft of trophies, including eight La Liga championships and four Champions League titles. With his country he has won the European Championship twice, and scored the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup final. Behind the wonderfully graceful passing and movement, and the accolades and trophies he has garnered, there exists an intelligent and thoughtful man who, until now, has let his beautifully skilful feet do the talking. In The Artist: Being Iniesta, the Spanish maestro paints a vivid self-portrait, in his own words but also in those of his coaches, team-mates, opponents, friends and family. The result is intriguing.

Jimmy Greaves: The One and Only is the sensational and official biography of arguably the greatest British goalscorer of all time, authorised by Jimmy's widow, Irene, and told by his friend of 64 years, Norman Giller. This brutally honest 'warts 'n' all' account covers the many highs and lows of Jimmy's extraordinary triple career as great footballer, master TV raconteur and then stage comedian, interrupted by six years of alcoholism. Jimmy and Irene lost their four-month-old son to pneumonia when they were barely out of their teens, and Norman examines how this tragedy set the tone for Jimmy's life. A parade of legends - Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Harry Redknapp among them - give personal glimpses of Greaves, and Norman, who delivered the eulogy at Jimmy's funeral, reveals stories of him that will surprise and shock his army of admirers. How did missing the 1966 World Cup Final really affect him? Was he ever drunk on the pitch? Who were his favourite players, and what did he consider his greatest goal?

Strength, speed and dedication: Cristiano Ronaldo is known throughout the world as a colossus of the modern game. But did you know that he underwent laser heart surgery aged just fifteen to enable him to continue playing the game he loved? Or that Nacional, his first professional club, donated twenty balls and two sets of kits to his youth team in order to sign him? Or how he came to be known as abelhinha -'little bee'- a name he would later pass on to his Yorkshire Terrier? Find out all this and more in Luca Caioli's biography of the global superstar, featuring exclusive insights from those who know him best and even the man himself.

A no-holds-barred expose on the financial transactions of the world's favourite sport The transfer fees clubs pay to sign top players now top 4 billion a year but much of the money has been flowing out of the game. A small group of wealthy investors including Russian oligarchs, English racehorse owners and a former billionaire gold miner have seized the opportunity to enter this booming market. Some have moved in on the territory of banks and lent money to clubs in exchange for a share in fees generated by Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and dozens more of today's stars. Others have acquired obscure teams to get a piece of the pie. Even as the global financial crisis sent fortunes tumbling this select group found a profitable place to park their money. The size of the transfer market has continued to rise - it increased seven-fold in value the last two decades, more than the FTSE share index. Between them, these wealthy investors have amassed hundreds of millions of euros in profits. At the same time, they have managed to stay out of the spotlight the world s most popular sport brings. Football s Secret Trade follows the money along a trail very few know about, from nondescript offices in the U.K. and ramshackle stadiums of South American clubs you have probably never heard of to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean. Warning you won t see a major transfer deal in the same light again.

By the early months of 2012, it was clear that the appointment of Andre Villas-Boas as head coach at Chelsea wasn't delivering the required success. Instead, the club was spiralling towards its worst season of the Roman Abramovich era. On 4 March, Villas-Boas was dismissed, with his former assistant Roberto Di Matteo made interim head coach until the end of the season. Struggling in the league and with their place in the Champions League in peril, it was an appointment designed to make the best of things until a permanent replacement could be sought in the summer. Instead, under Di Matteo's guidance, Chelsea embarked on a run of performances that not only led to an FA Cup triumph, but resurrected their European hopes with improbable victories over Napoli, Benfica and Guardiola's all-conquering Barcelona before, against all odds, winning the Champions League by defeating Bayern Munich in their own stadium. This is the story of a triumph that came out of the blue.

Football has become one of the most mediated cultural practices in modern Western societies, providing players, officials and spectators with implicit and often hidden discourses about race/ethnicity, national identity and gender. This book provides new and critical insights into how mediated football as a contested cultural practice influences, and is influenced by, discourses and stereotypes about race/ethnicity, nation and gender that operate at the local, national and global level. It analyzes both contemporary media representations and the ways these representations are negotiated, interpreted and used by football media audiences. These issues are explored across all media genres (print media, television, online, social media, film, and so forth) in a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural manner, with contributions from diverse disciplines and countries. This book was originally published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

This book is a fascinating journey through a series of scholarly articles. The journey begins by tracing one of the most significant stories in the popularization of Association Football. In the next leg of the journey it charts the diverse and changing face of the modern British game. It then moves on to the global spread of the game from England and its domestication and appropriation in its new homes across the planet. It also investigates the exchanges which are increasingly taking place between these new homes of football. In the concluding pieces football's global experience is compared with the attempts at globalizing baseball and drawing out the larger patterns that inform football's global experience. This book was published as a special issue in Soccer and Society.

This book employs men's football as a lens through which to investigate questions relating to immigration, racism, integration and national identity in present-day Sweden. Specifically, this study explores if professional football serves as a successful model of multiracialism/multiculturalism for the rest of Swedish society to emulate.

This volume presents research on policy responses to racism in sporting codes, predominantly Australian Rules football, in a global context. While the three guest editors are based in Australia, and their work pertains to the uniquely domestic game of Australian Rules football, the outcomes, research vectors and key issues from this research are part of a much larger on-going international conversation that is equally relevant when considering, for instance, racism in English Premier League football, first class cricket and basketball. The book is an outcome of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project titled Assessing the Australian Football League's Racial and Religious Vilification Laws to Promote Community Harmony, Multiculturalism and Reconciliation, which investigated social participation and the impact of the Australian Football League's anti-racial vilification policy since its introduction in 1995. This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The 2018/19 Premier League season was a historic one for African players in English football. More than 130 years after Arthur Wharton became the first, Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah shared the Golden Boot with Arsenal's Gabon striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in a record-breaking campaign that saw Liverpool pipped for the title by a point by Manchester City. A statue of Wharton now stands at the Football Association's headquarters at St George's Park - a testament to his status as an important pioneer of the game. But the story of how it got there, just like many of the African players who followed in his path such as Steve Mokone, Albert Johanneson, Peter Ndlovu, Christopher Wreh, Lucas Radebe and Didier Drogba, is far from straightforward. Ed Aarons describes how they confronted racism to help change the face of English football forever, enabling the modern generation of superstars like Mane and Salah to flourish. Detailing their remarkable journeys to Anfield from Senegal and Egypt, Made in Africa also features an exclusive interview with Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp - who broke the transfer record for an African player for the third time in the space of 14 months when he signed Naby Keita for almost GBP53m in August 2017. He explains how the club's African contingent played an integral role in the thrilling climax to the season that ended with them becoming European champions for the sixth time.

The 2020/21 football calendar was like no other. The first full Premier League season played during a global pandemic saw the schedule shortened with games played seemingly every day between September and May. The stadiums were empty, revenues fell and coaches had to adapt as players tested positive for Covid-19, but the beautiful game carried on. Football in a Pandemic takes an in-depth look at the tactics and strategies used during this unique season, whether a side was competing at the very summit, clinging to survival or somewhere in between. From high pressing, to low-block defending, patient build-up play and quick-fire counter attacking, UEFA A-licensed coach Sam Hudson puts the game plans under the microscope, highlighting the many intricacies and micro-tactics used by some of football's finest coaching minds.

The Nearly Men tells the fascinating stories of some of the most revered international football teams of all time. Through the history of the World Cup there are many sides who thrilled us all with their elegance and style, or who revolutionised the game, only to fail when it mattered most. They are the teams that could, and in some cases perhaps should, have won the World Cup, yet remain memorable for what they did achieve as well as what they didn't. They all left a lasting legacy, be that of unfulfilled potential, crushed dreams or the artistry they produced that could have seen them prevail. Their exploits and accomplishments are frequently hailed more than those of the winners. The Nearly Men celebrates these teams: what made them great, what saw them fail, the legacy they left and why onlookers remember them so fondly. It is a tale of frustration and disappointment, but also of footballing beauty and lasting legacy, in homage to the kind of greatness that isn't defined by victory.

Everybody Round My House for a Parmo! is the story of the most successful era in Middlesbrough FC's history, as told by those who experienced it. From Marinelli to Mendieta and Vidmar to Viduka, this 'small town in Europe' went from relegation fodder to cup-winners on the cusp of European glory in the space of just three short seasons, between 2003 and 2006. But while results on the pitch were memorable, they mean nothing without the backstory of how such heights were reached. Told with the help of players, club staff and local media at the heart of the journey, this is the inside story of how Steve McClaren transformed the Teessiders' fortunes while encountering more than a few hiccups along the way - including a failed drug test and even a manager getting hit by an angry fan's season ticket! It's one of modern football's greatest fairy tales, but even the greatest successes come with their fair share of struggles.

Heart of Midlothian are a football club steeped in history, famous for their iconic maroon and white colours. Author Grant Young takes us on a journey from the late 1950s to the Championship-winning season of 2020/21, experienced through 51 match shirts, each brought to life with a compelling story and stunning photographs. Grant doggedly tracked down the shirts over a 20-year period to bring them together for the first time in print. Immerse yourself in extraordinary kits revered by fans throughout the decades: eye-catching kits of the 70s and 80s, flamboyant kits from the 90s, then on to the 2000s and kits associated with successful seasons and an owner who would take the club to the brink. Discover shirts from the 1959 League Cup Final, the Scottish Cup wins of 1998 and 2006, plus the incredible 2012 duel against city rivals Hibernian, along with obscure and extremely rare shirts. Finally, we move to the current-day shirts accompanied by the highs and lows of relegation, promotion, demotion and becoming a fan-owned club.

Please Don't Take Me Home is the emotional tale of Italian immigrant Simone Abitante's 20-year love affair with Fulham Football Club. After leaving his native country, Simone falls in love with London and its oldest club, embarking on a personal mission to spread the word and get Fulham recognised beyond Britain by as many people as possible. Following the Cottagers through the most successful spell in their modern history, Simone takes his nephews to Craven Cottage where - together with new friends and Whites addicts Jeff, Mark and Ben - they experience unforgettable wins, exhilarating highs and devastating lows, amid rivers of beer, true friendship and an unquenchable passion for the beautiful game. Even after leaving London for Mallorca, Simone keeps following his beloved Fulham, with that famous white jersey serving as a second skin. Played out against a backdrop of heartbreaks, departures and life-changing decisions, Please Don't Take Me Home is a footballing story every fan can relate to.

Stunning officially endorsed coffee table book commemorating the 50th anniversary of Tottenham Hotspur's famous League and Cup Double in 1961 - the first 'Double' achieved in the modern era of football. Beautifully presented within its' own real-cloth slipcase adorned in silver with the book's title and the iconic badge worn by the team during this historic season, this lavish collector's item showcases previously unseen behind-the-scenes photographs and memorabilia and tells the story of the season through original newspaper cuttings, tickets and match programmes. Put together by the editorial team who put together the Spurs Opus, with the full co-operation of the surviving players and Tottenham Hotspur FC (and with full access to the historical archives at White Hart Lane), this sensational publication will be the focal point of the club's 1960/61 celebrations which will begin at the start of the 2010 season.