This book is packed with awesome true stories, real science and fascinating facts and will make you laugh loads - and it's all about football. What is a vomitory? When do footballers wee? Where do goalkeepers let in chickens? When did women start playing football? You'll find the answers to these questions and more in chapters on subjects such as biology, maths and history. Illustrated throughout with hilarious cartoons and filled with laugh-out-loud gags this is the perfect book for any boy or girl who loves football.
Stone had for a very long time, dreamed of becoming a footballer. Sadly, he couldn’t pursue it, and began to take care of his parents, wife and three children. Everything goes on just fine, until a huge water crisis has grips the world. No rain for over three years worsens the situation. There is total chaos. Humans, animals and other living things find it difficult to survive on Earth. NASA then announced that they had found a new planet, and send four astronauts to see if it was habitable. The astronauts found water on the planet, and it turns out that the planet doesn’t need water: which means, they can take it to Earth! But then, Earthope, the new planet, imposes a condition: that a football match must be played to win water. What happens next? Read this gripping novel to find out!
Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World charts the growth of the game in each major footballing country, from the very first kick to the first World Cup in 1930. Football's global spread from muddy playing fields to colossal, purpose-built stadiums is a story of class, race, gender and politics. Along the way, you'll meet the people who established football around the world and discover the challenges they faced. Featuring interviews with leading historians, journalists, club chairmen and descendants of club founders and players, Origin Stories tells the fascinating country-by-country tale of how football put down its roots around the world. The sport's early growth includes a cast of English aristocrats and 'Scotch professors', French tournament pioneers, international merchants, keen students, raucous rebels and more. Origin Stories shows that football's early development was a truly global team effort.
An almost unknown chapter of sporting—and American—history Tracing the history of the National Football League during World War II, this book delves into the severe player shortage during the war which led to the merging of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles, creating the “Steagles.” The team’s center was deaf in one ear, its wide receiver was blind in one eye (and partially blind in the other), and its halfback had bleeding ulcers. One player was so old he’d never before played football with a helmet. Yet somehow, this group of players—deemed unfit for military service due to age or physical ailment—posted a winning record in the league, to the surprise of players and fans alike. Digging into the history of the war paralleled by the unlikely story of the Steagles franchise, both sports fans and history buffs will learn about the cultural significance of this motley crew of ball players during a trying time in United States history.
“An eccentric, fascinating exposé of a world most of us know nothing about. . . . Bristles with anecdotes that are almost impossible to believe.” —New York Times Book Review “Terrific. . . . A travelogue full of important insights into both cultural change and persistence. . . . Foer’s soccer odyssey lends weight to the argument that a humane world order is possible.” — Washington Post Book World A groundbreaking work—named one of the five most influential sports books of the decade by Sports Illustrated—How Soccer Explains the World is a unique and brilliantly illuminating look at soccer, the world’s most popular sport, as a lens through which to view the pressing issues of our age, from the clash of civilizations to the global economy. From Brazil to Bosnia, and Italy to Iran, this is an eye-opening chronicle of how a beautiful sport and its fanatical followers can highlight the fault lines of a society, whether it’s terrorism, poverty, anti-Semitism, or radical Islam—issues that now have an impact on all of us. Filled with blazing intelligence, colorful characters, wry humor, and an equal passion for soccer and humanity, How Soccer Explains the World is an utterly original book that makes sense of our troubled times.
Test your football knowledge with over 300 funny and fascinating questions about international games.How much do you know about the World Cup - and the world? Test yourself and your friends with over 300 brain-busting questions from Football School. Why are England called the Three Lions? What is Lionel Messi's creepy-crawly nickname? Which World Cup player wore a wig? Discover the answers to these questions and much, much more. Packed with hilarious cartoons and fascinating trivia, this spin-off from the bestselling series is the perfect way for fans to learn more about the beautiful game.
A Sports Illustrated Best Book of the Year: “Vivid portraits of the kids, parents and coaches of the Greater Miami Pop Warner league” (Linda Robertson, The Miami Herald). Although its participants are still in grade school, Pop Warner football is serious business in Miami, where local teams routinely advance to the national championships. Games draw thousands of fans; recruiters vie for nascent talent; drug dealers and rap stars bankroll teams; and the stakes are so high that games sometimes end in gunshots. In America’s poorest neighborhood, troubled parents dream of NFL stardom for children who long only for a week in Disney World at the Pop Warner Super Bowl. In 2001, journalist Robert Andrew Powell spent a year following two teams through roller-coaster seasons. The Liberty City Warriors, former national champs, will suffer the team’s first-ever losing season. The Palmetto Raiders, undefeated for two straight years, will be rewarded for good play with limo rides and steak dinners. But their flamboyant coach (the “Darth Vader of Pop Warner coaches”) will face defeat in a down-to-the-wire playoff game. We Own This Game is an inside-the-huddle look into a world of innocence and corruption, where every kickoff bares political, social, and racial implications; an unforgettable drama that shows us just what it is to win and to lose in America. “Powell elevates We Own This Game well above the average sports book to a significant sociological study.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Our view of football will never be the same again... Written by a world-respected football historian, this football history/gift title reveals the global game's greatest myths and untruths. Football has been completely mythologized and many of the things football fans think they know about football and its history turn out not to be true. We want to believe the myths, and so they become accepted. So much football writing is not properly researched, and so the myths get repeated... again and again and again. Backed up by the highest level of academic research yet written in an accessible, mass-market style, the book will explore the truth behind many accepted myths. For example, did you know: - The Germans took football to Brazil, not the English - Rugby and not football could quite easily have been the world's leading sport - There are gay professional players ....and always have been! - Goalkeepers should not dive for penalties - Football hooliganism did not begin in England - Shirt colours do make a difference - Cambridge and not Sheffield is the home of the oldest football club in the world - Arsenal should not be in the Premier League... they cheated to be there - The Dynamo Kiev team were not executed after beating a German SS team in 1941 - England did not win the World Cup fairly in 1966 ... but not in the way you think! Written by Kevin Moore, the founding director of the National Football Museum (the world's leading football museum), this thoroughly researched and authoritative book will debunk more than 50 of the greatest myths surrounding football.
“The story . . . has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It’s a fascinating and thoroughly American tale.” —Candice Millard, New York Times–bestselling author John J. Miller delivers the intriguing, never-before-told story of how Theodore Roosevelt saved American Football—a game that would become the nation’s most popular sport. Miller’s sweeping, novelistic retelling captures the violent, nearly lawless days of late 19th century football and the public outcry that would have ended the great game but for a crucial Presidential intervention. Teddy Roosevelt’s championing of football led to the creation of the NCAA, the innovation of the forward pass, a vital collaboration between Walter Camp, Charles W. Eliot, John Heisman and others, and, ultimately, the creation of a new American pastime. Perfect for readers of Douglas Brinkley’s Wilderness Warrior, Michael Lewis’s The Blind Side, and Conn and Hal Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys, Miller’s The Big Scrum reclaims from the shadows of obscurity a remarkable story of one defining moment in our nation’s history. “The first complete account of Roosevelt’s football rescue . . . a great story.” —The Wall Street Journal “Fascinating . . . At a time when a coalition of suburban soccer moms and misguided caretakers of American athletics are hell-bent on watering down the game of football, you should take the time to read this book.” —Sal Paolantonio, ESPN “A richly detailed history of football’s founding . . . a useful primer, introducing us to some of the sport’s most famous pioneers.” —The New York Times “Enjoyable history of a seldom explored turning point in American sports history.” —Booklist
