Nothing Like It Before The Untold Stories Of The World Cup Soccer Championships

Under the Lights and in the Dark: Untold Stories of Women's Soccer takes an unprecedented look inside the lives of professional football players around the world – from precarious positions in underfunded teams and leagues, to sold-out stadiums and bright lights. Award-winning filmmaker and journalist Gwendolyn Oxenham tells the stories of the phenoms, underdogs, and nobodies – players willing to follow the game wherever it takes them. Under the Lights and in the Dark takes us inside the world of women's soccer, following players across the globe, from Portland Thorns star Allie Long, who trains in an underground men's league in New York City; to English national Fara Williams, who hid her homelessness from her teammates while playing for the English national team. Oxenham takes us to Voronezh, Russia, where players battle more than just snowy pitches in pursuing their dream of playing pro, and to a refugee camp in Denmark, where Nadia Nadim, now a Danish international star, honed her skills after her family fled from the Taliban. Whether you're a newcomer to the sport or a die-hard fan, this is an inspiring book about stars' beginnings and adventures, struggles and hardship, and, above all, the time-honored romance of the game.

The study of association football has recently emerged as vibrant field of inquiry, attracting scholars worldwide from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. "Soccer As the Beautiful Game: Football’s Artistry, Identity and Politics," held at Hofstra University in April 2014, gathered together scholars, media, management, and fans in the largest ever conference dedicated to the game in North America. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive view of the academic perspectives on offer at the conference, itself a snapshot of the state of this increasingly rich scholarly terrain. The diversity of approaches range from theory to pedagogy to historical and sociological engagements with the game at all levels, from the grassroots to the grand spectacle of the World Cup, while the international roster of authors is testimony to the game’s global reach. This collection of essays therefore offers a state of the field for soccer studies and a road map for further exploration. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Soccer & Society.

Geoffrey Douglas's The Game of Their Lives: The Untold Story of the World Cup's Biggest Upset tells the inspirational underdog story of the 1950s World cup, a must-read for soccer fanatics. In the late spring of 1950, eleven young immigrants' sons, most of them strangers to each other, came together for the love and fun of a game of soccer. They came from Missouri, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, from jobs in canneries, brickyards, post offices, classrooms, and bars, to play for their country in the 1950 World Cup, resulting in what has since been called, by scores of sources for more than forty years, the greatest upset victory in the history of American sports. But no one in America at the time paid attention. Their only public honor--roughly twenty minutes' worth--was from a throng of strangers in a Brazilian mining town. Geoffrey Douglas's The Game of Their Lives is the story of the lives of these men: their jobs, wives, sweethearts, neighborhoods, the innocence of their era, the anonymity in which they worked and played. It is the story of heroism, stoicism, and simple unsung grace. Of a time before television, endorsement contracts, movie rights for serial killers, and seven-figure idols who denigrate us all. And ultimately--though it is not a sports story--it is the story of a game, played brilliantly. A single game of soccer, the greater game of life.

This is not a book about football. Well, it is, in a sense, but it's also a book about overcoming the odds. About being rejected from the sporting mainstream, but fighting back. About training for an international tournament with only a single ball. It's about representing one country, but being forced to live your life in another. About finding sporting representation as a rank outsider; overcoming political superpowers to find a place. It's about scrambling a team together in a few weeks to represent millions of people, or fronting a multi-continental organization on a near-bankrupt shoestring because it's that important to your indigenous reindeer-herding Scandinavian ethnic minority that they have their own global, international outlet. Those last two paragraphs probably sound like hyperbole. I couldn't quite believe it either, but every word of them is real. Follow me on a journey down a footballing rabbit hole, where sport and politics mingle in glorious, positive harmony. This is CONIFA

This comprehensive history of the world's top soccer tournament--from the 1930s through the 1990 competitions--features vivid accounts of individual games from the World Cup's illustrious history and is packed with behind-the-scenes stories and character sketches of the managers and players. Photos.

Celebrate another historic gold medal with the behind-the-scenes story of the Canadian World Junior program, from bestselling author Mark Spector. On the World Juniors hockey stage today, Canada is known as the team to beat. They hold the record for the most gold medals won (eighteen since the tournament’s inception), their games draw millions of fans each year, and the tournament serves as a showcase for each year’s best talent. But things weren’t always so rosy. For years, Canada languished in obscurity at the World Juniors. Wearing the red-and-white wasn’t a mark of honour but merely a sideshow to the players, owners resented the interruption to their league operations, and Canada was an afterthought at the tournament. Canada was supposed to be better at hockey than any nation on earth, but no one took them seriously. So, the team set out on a reclamation mission. The Program of Excellence was born, and with it, a new hope for hockey’s future in Canada. No more would Canada be content with merely showing up. Instead, each year, the country would send its best talent—from Gretzky to Lemieux to Crosby to McDavid—to reclaim its spot at the top of the hockey world. Tracing the owner disputes, off-ice antics, and riveting on-ice action of nearly forty years at the World Juniors, Road to Gold is full of inside stories from hockey greats. And, this edition features a new chapter reliving the amazing final game against Russia in January 2020 that brought the gold medal back to Canada. Funny, smart, and clear-eyed, Mark Spector traces the remarkable rise of the Canadian World Junior program and shows how Canada created not just a new team, but a new dream for the sport.