English Football History

An updated edition celebrating the greatest Steelers players including members of the Super Bowl XLV team!Who are the men made of steel? In this behind-the-scenes look at the AFC Conference championship team, Jim Wexell digs deep to bring out the stories and legacies which have defined this NFL empire for the last seventy years. Through interviews with players, coaches, and managers, Wexell captures the determination and brashness that has made Pittsburgh the powerhouse of football.

In this extraordinary tour de force, David Goldblatt tells the full story of soccer's rise from chaotic folk ritual to the world's most popular sport - now poised to fully establish itself in the USA. Already celebrated internationally, The Ball Is Round illuminates soccer's role in the political and social histories of modern societies, but never loses sight of the beauty, joy, and excitement of the game itself.

The National Football League's current dominance has obscured how professional football got its start. In The League, John Eisenberg reveals that Art Rooney, George Halas, Tim Mara, George Preston Marshall, and Bert Bell took an immense risk by investing in the professional game. At that time, the sport barely registered on the national scene. The five owners succeeded only because at critical junctures in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, each sacrificed the short-term success of his team for the longer-term good of the League.

At five feet ten inches tall, running back Walter Payton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit. Nicknamed “Sweetness” during his college football days, he became the NFL’s all-time leader in rushing and all-purpose yards, capturing the hearts of fans in his adopted Chicago.

The pro football season of 1963 was dominated by the unexpected. In April, months prior to the beginning of play, it was revealed that two All-Star players, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were gambling on the sport and would be suspended from play for at least a year. Even worse, in May, one of the league’s bigger-than-life personalities, Big Daddy Lipscomb, was found dead, with police saying he perished from a heroin overdose, something those who knew him best still dispute.

The Chicago Bears are more than a football team - they are a legend. Founded in 1919, the Bears have won more regular season games than any other NFL franchise. With 26 players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and thirteen retired jerseys, it’s no wonder the Bears can be defined by three phrases: Big, tough, and full of characters. The Bears, like Chicago, are not just people. They are personalities. In Amazing Tales From the Chicago Bears Sideline, Bears fans can hear about the men who have made the Bears one of the greatest franchises in pro football....

From the mid-1980s into the early 1990s, the greatest athlete of all time streaked across American sports and popular culture. Stadiums struggled to contain him. Clocks failed to capture his speed. His strength was legendary. His power unmatched. Video game makers turned him into an invincible character—and they were dead-on. He climbed (and walked across) walls, splintered baseball bats over his knee, turned oncoming tacklers into ground meat.

Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan.

Want to know what really happened? Stan Isaacs knows. He was there! "The Shot Heard Round the World," in 1951. "The Fight of the Century," in 1971. The horror of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Secretariat's legendary win at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Stan Isaacs saw them all live. Isaacs covered thousands of sports stories in his more than fifty years as a journalist. But ten moments stand out in his memory. Ten Moments That Shook the Sports World offers Isaacs' eyewitness accounts of the events that changed sports history.

At The Athletic, home to the best newsroom in sports, this question would become a labor of love for dozens of the best football writers on the planet, including Mike Sando and Dan Pompei. Over the course of 100 riveting profiles—each drawing upon unparalleled access and superlative storytelling to offer intimate perspective on what made the greatest players tick—these writers reveal their findings. In the process, they also uncover the history of football.

They were America's Team - the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.

When Kyle Shanahan became the NFL's youngest offensive coordinator in 2008, he had one prevailing rule: Tell me the why. If a colleague couldn't justify his position by providing the unassailable reasoning behind it, he was told to get the hell out of Shanahan's office. Shanahan and the members of his coaching tree—including Sean McVay, Mike McDaniel, Raheem Morris, and Matt LaFleur—came up in a sport where innovation was the exception, not the rule. There had been brilliant football minds before, from Paul Brown to Bill Walsh to Bill Belichick.

After his bestselling home run books Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100, Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America. Why We Love Football is Posnanski’s newest must-have deep dive into the archives and legends of the sport, and the result is a rousing tale of the 100 greatest moments in football lore. This is the best kind of sports writing. Entertaining, enlightening, heartbreaking, hilarious, and always fascinating, these stories of the sport offer a panoramic look across its history.

For 33 years, Bobby Bowden was the heart and soul of Florida State football. Now Seminoles fans of every generation will get to relive the glory and passion of Florida’s winningest coach in this edition of Tales from the Florida Seminoles Sideline. In this gripping narrative, Bobby Bowden and Steve Ellis bring readers right up to the sideline to experience pivotal moments in Florida’s football history.

The Players' Coach is a player-development masterclass. It is also an inspirational life story, from humble beginnings to becoming the quarterback for the University of Iowa, a college coaching career, and then to assistant-coach and offensive-coordinator roles in six different decades. This book is destined to be a football classic, a coaching Bible, and a must-listen on leadership.

Dive into the heart of the world's most popular sport, soccer, where every moment thrives with tension and excitement, every skillful maneuver draws spectators' attention, and tactical battles are waged with high stakes. At the core of this beautiful game lies the might of formations — the tactical architecture that defines a team's character, enhances its strengths, and dictates its gameplay. Soccer Coaching: 11v11 Soccer Formations: Masterclass in Soccer Formations, History, Case Studies & Tactics is your comprehensive guide to the intricate world of these crucial structures. Consider ...

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled.

No single element has the power to absolutely define the lasting enchantment of Oklahoma football. Decades of great successes and occasional heartbreak have spawned generations of faithful disciples, who treat fall Saturdays like sacred holidays dedicated to their heroes donning the crimson and cream. Tales from the Oklahoma Sooner Sideline provides a glimpse, with a behind-the-scenes perspective, into the traditions surrounding Oklahoma football.

A book that explores the enduring legends of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden's Oakland Raiders, Badasses is the definitive biography of arguably the last team to play old-fashioned tough-guy football. Peter Richmond, co-author of the New York Times best seller The Glory Game, offers a fascinating look at the 1970s Oakland Raiders, led by colorful greats from another era.

The United States Football League was the last football league to not merely challenge the mighty NFL but also to cause it to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, featured as many as 18 teams, secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans, and launched the careers of legends - but then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner, a New York businessman named Donald Trump. Jeff Pearlman draws on more than 400 interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America.