Sports Biographies Football

Ruud Gullit knows better than anyone else that to understand soccer you have to understand strategy. When he started playing soccer, his only "strategy" was to get the ball, outrun everyone else to the other end of the field, and score. At first it served him well, but as he advanced through the sport, he learned that it takes much more than speed to make a winning team.

On 30 November 1872, England took on Scotland at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, a match that is regarded as the first international fixture. More than 5,000 fans watched the two sides play out a 0-0 draw. It was the first of more than a thousand games played by the side, and the beginning of a national love affair that unites the country in a way that few other events can match. In Hayward's brilliant new biography of the team, based on interviews with dozens of past and present players and coaches, we get a vivid portrait of all aspects of the team's story.

Ken "The Snake" Stabler was the embodiment of the original Men in Black - the freewheeling, hard-hitting Oakland Raiders. The league's first swashbuckling pass thrower, the mythical southpaw Southerner famous for come-from-behind drives late in the game, Stabler led the Raiders to their first Super Bowl championship in 1977.

When Jen Welter became a linebackers coach for the Arizona Cardinals in 2015, she was the first woman to ever break the glass sideline of the NFL. In Play Big, Welter reveals the grit that it took to be a trailblazer in the ultimate boys' club.

Roddy Collins is a football man—now in the sixth decade of a career as a player (at 16 clubs), manager (12 clubs) and commentator. And he is a funny man: an unequalled raconteur with a sharp eye for the absurdities of the professional game and spectacular recall. He has made friends wherever he has gone, along with some high-quality enemies. When John Delaney said he could get Roddy a job if he'd just stop criticising him, Roddy replied that he'd 'rather dig holes in the road'.

In Bill Belichick: The Inspiring Life and Leadership Lessons of One of Football's Greatest Coaches, you will learn the story of how Bill Belichick became the legend he is today. At the time of this writing, Belichick has won six Super Bowl championships, the most of any professional coach in history. There are a number of key leadership lessons that can be learned from Bill Belichick, such as coaching everyone on your team, building a fluid team, and maximizing the potential of each individual player.

Jamie Vardy, the free-scoring talisman behind Leicester City's Premier League champion title, has become a modern against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie thought his chances had gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels while working in a factory, his impressive performances and hard work saw him rise again.

The inside story of an unrivaled period in the illustrious history of Liverpool Football Club, Robbo: Now You’re Gonna Believe Us... is a personal account as seen through the eyes of author Andrew Robertson. Taking you behind the scenes at Anfield and Melwood, he'll reveal how it all happened - how doubters turned to believers - and brought the league title home after a 30-year wait.

Andrés 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 audiobook. Andrés Iniesta was 12 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'.

Lorsque Kylian M'Bappé entre dans le stade Loujniki de Moscou ce soir du 15 juillet 2018, il est sur le point de réaliser son rêve : devenir champion du monde. Voici le parcours hors norme d'un surdoué du football : depuis ses premiers matchs à l'AS Bondy jusqu'à son but victorieux en finale du mondial 2018 face à la Croatie.

John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation’s most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach. Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with his hometown radio station: a chance to unwind, tell stories, and impart his own brand of wit and wisdom.

Diego Armando Maradona compie sessant'anni. Per tutti coloro che lo hanno amato rimane semplicemente il "mito", il piccolo grande uomo che è arrivato in una città come Napoli a cambiarne per sempre e irrimediabilmente la storia. 1984-1991: sette anni che valgono infinitamente di più, sette anni che sono una favola in cui il posto della bacchetta magica viene preso da un piede sinistro.

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering wildfires, war, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story about this deaf football team. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one.

Archie Macpherson's compelling biography reappraises Jock Stein's career and looks closely at the personality of the man whose shrewdness and cunning stamped him eventually with greatness. Stein hugely influenced the history of football between his debut as a professional player in Lanarkshire in 1942 and his death at the side of the pitch in 1985. He redesigned the landscape of the Scottish game as the great innovator and successfully exported his values outside the country when European football was in the grip of the ice-age of defensive football.

For the first time, Martin O’Neill reflects on one of the most varied and successful football careers in the British Isles. He made his breakthrough playing for Distillery in Northern Ireland before joining Brian Clough’s legendary Nottingham Forest team, becoming one of the few players who made the epic journey from the Second Division to the glory years: winning the First Division championship, two League Cups and back-to-back European Cups. O’Neill represented Northern Ireland over sixty times.

The inspiring memoir of one of football's greatest players - Steph Houghton - in which she recounts the highs and lows of making it to the top of her game as England Captain, star of the London Olympics, and Man City stalwart, via Sunderland, Leeds and Arsenal. With 121 caps for the Lionesses, Steph has been at the heart of the women's football revolution, inspiring girls and young women around the world but in her own understated way.

The history of the Ivy League dates back to 1869 when Princeton played the first college football game against Rutgers. The Ancient Eight explores Ivy League football today. To play in the NFL, one must maintain the highest academic standards and be a great football player. The rivalries are as intense, as are the strict rules–but there is also a genuine purity in the Ivy League.

In 2014, the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine began - and top football club Shakhtar Donetsk has since been in exile. This book tells their story; inevitably a story of the conflict and the recent Russian invasion but also a testament to the power of the game and the will of the players. It is ultimately a footballing story, exploring the experience and meaning of being a Shakhtar player through the lens of a country in the shadow of a huge aggressive neighbour.

12 is the propulsive story of this gritty comeback. It's a drama that unfolds in the locker room, the court room, and under the brightest lights in all of sports - the Super Bowl. Now for the first time, listeners will have an exclusive look into Tom Brady's experience and the NFL's shocking strangle-hold on their players. With unprecedented access to Brady himself, his teammates, and his lawyers, we will see just how a football legend went up against one of the largest corporations in the world to stage the greatest comeback in NFL history and emerge a god of the gridiron.

Peter Schmeichel is an undisputed giant of the global game - and One: My Autobiography is his story. As a serial winner and larger-than-life character with Manchester United and Denmark, he rivalled Gordon Banks and Lev Yashin as the world's greatest goalkeeper. Sir Alex Ferguson, having paid just £505,000 to sign him in 1991, hailed him as 'the bargain of the century'. Schmeichel would become a key figure in United's successes during the ensuing decade, starting with a first domestic league title in more than a quarter of a century.