Sports Soccer

Paul Lake was Manchester born, a City fan from birth. His footballing talent was spotted at a young age and, in 1983, he signed coveted schoolboy forms for City. Only a short time later he was handed the team captaincy. An international career soon beckoned and, after turning out for the England under-21 and B teams, he received a call-up to the England training camp for Italia '90.

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.

Alex Morgan first joined a soccer team when she was 14 years old, quickly impressing her peers and coaches with her skills. From there, she grew to become a world-class soccer player, reaching incredible heights including a FIFA Women's World Cup championship and an Olympic gold medal. Learn about Alex's rise in soccer in this electric biography in the Stars of Sports series.

DeRo is the life story of one of the greatest athletes Canada has ever produced. Born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario, Dwayne De Rosario wasn’t expected to make it out of high school, let alone to the top of soccer world. As part of a family of five, growing up in a one-bedroom apartment, he had to work for everything he had and sometimes that meant doing things he realized he didn’t want to do. It was soccer that saved him from a life on the street.

Football attracts people from all walks of life—but very few can match the story of Paul Montgomery, the flamboyant Geordie who went from running a floating nightclub to spotting some of the greatest British footballing talent of the last 40 years. In Rough Diamond, Paul Montgomery lifts the lid on his incredible career change, the highs and lows of his footballing journey to the top of the sport and how he still loves the game that has given him so much.

Even people who don't know football know Pelé. The best of a generation of Brazilian players universally acknowledged as the most accomplished and attractive group of footballers ever to play the game, he won the World Cup three times and is Brazil's all-time record goalscorer. But how did this man - a sportsman, a mere footballer, like many others - become a global icon? Was it just by being the best at what he did, or do people respond to some other quality?

Jürgen Klopp's coaching career began in the German second tier at the unfashionable club of FSV Mainz 05, whom he steered to the Budesliga for the first time in 41 years. In 2008, he joined Borussia Dortmund, where he won back-to-back league titles and took the club to the UEFA Champions League final. He left Germany for one of the England's most challenging jobs: to manage Liverpool, a once-mighty club that had not managed sustained success since the 1980s. It was not a task for the fainthearted. Anfield, Liverpool's home, is a temple to flamboyant attacking soccer powered by passion.

It was one of the most extraordinary takeovers British football has known. In February 2021, Ryan Reynolds joined with Rob McElhenney to buy Wrexham AFC, a non-league team in North Wales. Wrexham, a former coal and steel town dealing with its post-industrial legacy, suddenly found itself at the centre of global attention, with broadcast networks around the world descending to discover what was going on. Tinseltown tells the story of this extraordinary, unpredictable and often surreal football takeover and the remarkable events that followed.

Simon Jordan made his fortune building a mobile phone company from scratch. When he sold it for £75 million, he bought Crystal Palace FC, the club he'd supported as a boy, and led them into the Premier League. Ten years later, Palace was in administration and Jordan had lost nigh on everything. Be Careful What You Wish For lifts the lid on being the owner of a football club and how the game really works. Hopes and dreams sit alongside greed, self-interest, dodgy transfers, boardroom fights and dressing room dressing downs.

'While the beautiful game has taught me a lot, becoming King of the Jungle got me thinking... I’ve had quite a life outside of football too. The World According to Harry is my take on the important things ­- from what makes true team spirit and not forgetting your East End roots, to the joys of jam roly-poly and knowing how lucky I am to have met a girl like Sandra. I can’t claim to be clued up on showbiz, but I’m certainly not short of a story or two.'

Anyone doubting that Diego Maradona was more than just a football player had only to witness the outpourings after his death on 25th November 2020. During his tempestuous life and career, he played for top clubs in South America and Europe, notably Napoli, where he became an adored hero and adopted son, and grew to be a legend in his homeland of Argentina after leading them to victory in the 1986 World Cup.

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.

At thirteen years old, Valeria "Magic" Salomón is already the best soccer player her town has ever seen. She has talent in spades and an abuelo whose tough-love coaching and lessons about “strength and honor” have made her the star of the Overlords, the top boys’ team in the state. But everything changes at the State Cup semi-final when Valeria gets her first period while Wearing. White. Shorts. After her team is unexpectedly eliminated, she goes from their secret weapon to their scapegoat.

Smart Money is the story of how a scientist with an inquiring mind was set loose in a backwater of professional football, and how he turned a modest, little-known team into a competitor in one of the world's most-watched sports leagues.

Often recruited before they've worn long trousers, today's footballers become superstars who earn huge amounts without ever learning much about the world beyond the training ground. But what do these Peter Pans, whose careers end just as most people's are getting going, do with the rest of their lives? Crouch speaks from his own experience and discusses with fellow former professionals too—just how do you safely release a near seven-foot striker back into the wild?

Having good confidence is very important to your goalkeeping, no matter what level you are playing at. Without it, performing well is going to be really hard, if possible. In this book, I will give you tips that will raise your confidence from the ashes, and you will also learn how to avoid falling into the same negative behavior again.

The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world, broadcast into 188 countries and watched by 3.2 billion people worldwide. It revolutionised football, transforming the beautiful game into a multi-billion-pound business and making its biggest stars millionaires. Fever Pitch tells the inside story of the formation of the league, from the early discussions with Rupert Murdoch about how Sky could be at the heart of this new league, to the bitter rivalries and radical new managers who changed the face of football forever.

How to Become a Professional Goalkeeper is the story of how I achieved my dreams of becoming a professional football (soccer) player, goalkeeper, even though I never played for any professional football academy as a child. I wrote this book to help inspire the next generation of young goalkeepers who are now battling to achieve their dreams of wanting to become a professional goalkeeper. And I am positive my story, and more importantly, my tips will open doors at professional clubs to give you an opportunity and will give you (or your goalkeeping child) the edge!

Michael Owen's new autobiography will enable him to open up about his football life for the first time and set the record straight once and for all. It promises to make for an explosive listen and one of the most hotly anticipated football books of the year. The legendary striker published his first book, Off the Record, in 2004 but feels he didn't have a voice during his playing days, and now, six years after hanging up his boots, he can finally lift the lid on what really happened during his career.

The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal - the biggest international corruption case of recent years, spearheaded by US investigators, involving dozens of countries, and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including its biggest event, the World Cup.