Unofficial Football World Champions

The Unofficial Football World Championships is probably the most exciting football competition on Earth. Its amazing story involves legendary teams and footballing minnows, classic finals and forgotten friendlies, celebrated players and unsung heroes. An alternative soccer history, Unofficial Football World Champions reveals international football's real champions and offers up a fresh perspective on the greatest game in the world. This fourth edition is fully updated for 2018.

An alternative soccer history involving legendary teams and footballing minnows, classic finals and forgotten friendlies, celebrated players and unsung heroes. Unofficial Football World Champions reveals international football's real champions and offers up a fresh perspective on the greatest game in the world. New revised and updated edition.

A guide to the Unofficial Football World Championships, featuring classic matches, key players, and statistics.

Presenting five books in the popular and exhaustive trivia series. This one’s for the sports buff in the family! Doug Lennox, the world champion of trivia, is back to score touchdowns, hit homers, win the golden boot, and knock in holes-in-one every time with a colossal compendium of Q&A athletics that has all anyone could possibly want to know from archery and cycling to skiing and wrestling and everything in between. Why does the winner of the Indianapolis 500 drink milk in victory lane? Who was the first player ever to perform a slam dunk in a basketball game? Why are golfers’ shortened pants called "plus-fours"? When was the Stanley Cup not awarded? Why does the letter k signify a strikeout on a baseball score sheet? Where is the world’s oldest tennis court? What’s more, Doug goes for gold with a wealth of Winter and Summer Olympics lore and legend that will amaze and captivate armchair fans and fervent competitors alike. Includes Now You Know Golf Now You Know Hockey Now You Know Soccer Now You Know Football Now You Know Baseball

This bundle presents Doug Lennox’s popular trivia book series in its entirety. These books will provide years and years of fun, with countless questions to be asked and tons of knowledge to be learned. The books cover general trivia but also such topics as sports (baseball, hockey, football, golf, soccer, among others), Christmas and the Bible, disasters and harsh weather, royal figures, crime and criminology, important people in Canada’s history, and so much more! Along the way we find out the answers to such questions as: Why do the British drive on the left and North Americans on the right? What football team was named after a Burt Reynolds character? Who started the first forensics laboratory? Which member of the British royal family competed at the Olympics? Lennox’s exhaustive series is fun for all ages. Includes Now You Know Now You Know More Now You Know Almost Everything Now You Know, Volume 4 Now You Know Big Book of Answers Now You Know Christmas Now You Know Big Book of Answers 2 Now You Know Golf Now You Know Hockey Now You Know Soccer Now You Know Football Now You Know Big Book of Sports Now You Know Baseball Now You Know Crime Scenes Now You Know Extreme Weather Now You Know Disasters Now You Know Pirates Now You Know Royalty Now You Know Canada’s Heroes Now You Know The Bible

Known around the world as football, soccer is the world’s most watched and played sport. Now Doug Lennox, the striker of Q&A, scores with a pitch full of tidbits that delivers the goods on Pelé, Maradona, Beckham, Zidane, and other superstars, as well as the history, traditions, and rules of the game. Doug has compiled a World Cup of trivia about a truly universal phenomenon that has legions of passionate, and sadly sometimes violent, fans. How did soccer originate?, Who was the first soccer player to score a hat trick in a World Cup final? What was the largest attendance ever for a soccer match? What is the "technical area"? Where was the world’s first soccer club formed? What was the first movie ever made about soccer? Where was the first World Cup held? What are the Laws of the Game? What were the 10 worst losses of life in soccer history?

The spread of COVID-19 and the consequent pandemic since early 2020 have brought about unprecedented changes in all spheres of global life, creating a new sense of (in)security with social distancing, physical isolation, quarantine and lockdown becoming buzzwords to combat the disease. As in all spheres of life, the first wave of the pandemic posed serious challenges to the world of soccer, with diverse and intriguing responses across the globe. This book documents the early impressions and initial responses of various stakeholders of the soccer world to the challenges of COVID-19 in 2020. It reveals how the process of confrontation, negotiation, adjustment and overcoming against such challenges necessitated and inspired novel responses and strong improvisations from soccer bodies to players, referees to spectators, and journalists to sponsors. This process has revealed abrupt as well as radical changes in the organization, rules, spectatorship and telecast of the game, thereby affecting the game’s cultural dimensions, commercial prospects and political implications. The volume points out that the way soccer has adjusted to the ‘new normal’ standard of the ‘COVID Regime’ has elicited newer meanings and nuanced representations of the game. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Soccer & Society.

The Blizzard is a quarterly football publication, put together by a cooperative of journalists and authors, its main aim to provide a platform for top-class writers from across the globe to enjoy the space and the freedom to write what they like about the football stories that matter to them. Issue Seven Contents ---------------- El Dorado ---------------- * The Ball and the Gun, by Carl Worswick—After a political rival was murdered, the Colombian government set up the world's richest league * The Blond Giant, by Stany Sirutis—Among the influx of foreign players to El Dorado was the Lithuanian goalkeeper Vytausas Krisciunas ---------------- Interview ---------------- * Ivica Osim — The great Bosnian coach reflects on the war, Japan and Alan Mullery's lack of fair play ----------------------------- The Victorian Age ----------------------------- * The First Columnist, by Paul Brown—How an early journalist for the Northern Echo helped shape the modern game * Stiffy the Goalkeeper, by John Harding—Lazy, drunken and corruptible, the first footballing hero of the stage could hardly have been less heroic * Out with a League Team, by Henry Leach—A journalist, writing in 1900, describes his experiences travelling the country reporting on Notts County ------------ Theory ------------ * Don Leo's Odyssey, by Joachim Barbier—From Amsterdam to Madrid to Gaudalajara to Budapest, Leo Beenhakker has never stopped learning * The English Spaniard, by Philippe Auclair—Roberto Martínez discusses his conception of football and the difficulties of addapting to the dark nights of Lancashire ------------------------ The Vanishing ------------------------ * The Strange Disappearing of Leslie Goldberg, by Anthony Clavane—How the right back who became Les Gaunt encapsulated the experiences of many 1930s Jewish footballers * Ten Past Ten and Ten Pastis, by Gunnar Persson—Gunnar Andersson's journey from Marseille legend to homeless alcoholic * End of the Road, by Richard Winton—Gretna's rise was a romantic fairy tale, their collapse provides grimly real lessons for all of Scottish football * Safe as Houses, by Paolo Bandini—Espen Baardsen was a Norway international but at 25 he gave up football to work in finance ---------------- Polemics ---------------- * Breaking the Mould, by Zac Lee Rigg—Last year Johnny Saelua became the first transgender person to play in World Cup qualifying * In Arsene We Trust, by Zach Slaton—However frustrating this season, the numbers suggest Arsenal would be worse off without Arsene Wenger * Dictionary of Received Ideas, by Brian Phillips—A guide to what pundits really mean when they use certain terms * Follow the Money, by Elliot Turner—How Nicaragua's national stadium highlights the problems with Fifa's Goal project * The Third Party, by Sergio Levinsky—A tax avoidance scandal in Argentina could have ramifications across the globe ------------- Fiction ------------- * The Limping God, part 2, by David Ashton—His football career ended by injury, John Brodie's life is going nowhere until he is sucked into the world of crime --------------------------- Greatest Games --------------------------- * Lazio 4-2 Ipswich Town", by Dominic Bliss—Uefa Cup, second round, second leg, Stadio Olimpico, Rome, 7 November 1973 --------------------- Seven Bells --------------------- * Fouls and Fisticuffs, by Scott Murray—A selection of unsavoury incidents we're supposed to condemn