Kategoria BISAC: Sports & Recreation >> Soccer

Afascinating and funny tell-all autobiographyfrom a man with anastonishing football career

John "Budgie" Burridge is a true journeyman pro and a hero to football fans. In a unique career spanning 30 years, Budgie played 771 league games for 29 teams, including Crystal Palaceand QPR (under Terry Venables at both clubs), Southampton (alongside a young Alan Shearer), Manchester City, Aston Villa (where he would play against Barcelona in the European Super Cup), Wolves, and in Scotland with Hibernian where he was a hero in their League Cup win of 1991. That happy sojourn to Edinburgh would...

France's performance in the 2002 World Cup brought back painful memories of a time when France was a weak contender in world and European football -- a time when national or club teams rarely won, and the French were renowned for having little interest in the game. Today, football plays a unique role in French society. French players and coaches are highly sought after abroad and the national team has chalked up significant recent victories, including a World Cup and European Championship. This book is the first in English to examine the extraordinary cultural, economic, and political...

Growing up Jewish in London with a difficult home life, Jonathan Wilson had plenty of reasons to feel he didn't belong, and one reason to feel certain he did: soccer. Wilson discovered his love for the game as a young boy; through his adolescence and adulthood and well into his later years it remained an important part of his life.

Soccer became Wilson's international passport, helping him find friends and community and solace all over the globe, from England to Israel to the US. Whether working on a kibbutz or teaching literature to young Americans, traveling through Russia or...

The identification and development of talented young players has become a central concern of football clubs at all levels of the professional game, as well as for national and international governing bodies. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey and assessment of youth development programmes in football around the world, to highlight best practice, and to offer clear recommendations for improvement.

The book draws on original, in-depth research at eight elite professional football clubs, including Barcelona, Ajax and Bayern Munich, as well as the French national...