82ASK

A A Gill

Andrew Swanston read law at Cambridge, but was inspired to write by his lifelong interest in early modern history. His Thomas Hill novels – The King’s Spy, The King’s Exile and The King’s Return – are set against the backdrops of the English Civil War, Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the early Restoration respectively. He is also the author of Waterloo: The Bravest Man and Beautiful Star and Other Stories. His first historical thriller set during the reign of Elizabeth I – Incendium (published in paperback as The Incendium Plot) – introduced readers to the academic, lawyer and intelligencer Dr Christopher Radcliff, whose adventures continue in Chaos. Andrew Swanston lives in Surrey.

A D Swanston

A E Langsford

A G Hopkins

A. J. BAIME is the New York Times best-selling author of The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War and Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. Both books are in development for major motion pictures. Baime is a longtime regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, and his articles have also appeared in the New York Times, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Granite Bay, California. Visit him at facebook.com/ajbaime and trumanbook.com.

A J Baime

A J Jacobs

A J P Taylor

Anthony James Pollard is a British medieval historian, specialising in the fifteenth century and in particular the Wars of the Roses. A leading authority in the field, he is profesor emeritus of Teesside University. His books include North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, Richard III and the Princes in theTower, Imagining Robin Hood: the Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context and Warwick the kingmaker: Politics, Power and Fame.

A J Pollard

A J Rochester

A K Benjamin is a clinical neuropsychologist and the author of Let Me Not Be Mad: A Story of Unravelling Minds.

A K Benjamin

A. L. Berridge read English at Oxford, and taught for ten years before moving into television, where her production credits range from period drama and thrillers to long-running soaps. She has written two previous novels, Top Ten besteller Honour and the Sword and In the Name of the King. Into the Valley of Death is her third novel.

A L Berridge

Alison Gaylin's first job was as a reporter for a celebrity tabloid, which sparked a lifelong interest in writing about people committing despicable acts. More than a decade later, she wrote and published her Edgar-nominated first novel, HIDE YOUR EYES. 
 
She's since published nine more books, including the USA Today and international bestselling Brenna Spector suspense series, which has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony and Thriller awards and won the Shamus award. 
 
She lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, cat and dog.

A L Gaylin

A Maxwell-Hyslop

A McArthur

A P Wavell

A.S. Webb is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Chaos, the first instalment of The Dark Pantheon Trilogy. She is inspired by stories rooted in history and mythology, that push the boundaries of imagination and urge us to reflect on what it means to be human.

A S Webb

A. A. Dhand is the author of six previous novels, and has been shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger Award. His DI Harry Virdee novels are currently being adapted for TV by the BBC. He was raised in Bradford and spent his youth observing the city from behind the counter of a small convenience store. After qualifying as a pharmacist, he worked in London and travelled extensively before returning to Bradford to start his own business and begin writing. The history, diversity and darkness of the city have inspired all his novels. For more information about A. A. Dhand and his books, follow him on X @aadhand, and on Instagram @aa_dhand.

A. A. Dhand

A. A. Gill

A. A. Milne

A. Anatoli

A. B. Poranek grew up sharing her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing. Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland's folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.

A. B. Poranek

A. Bradley

Professor A. C. Grayling is Principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. He has written and edited over thirty books on philosophy, history, science and current affairs. For several years he wrote columns for the Guardian newspaper and The Times and was the chairman of the 2014 Man Booker Prize.

A. C. Grayling

A.D. Miller is the author of Snowdrops, The Earl of Petticoat Lane and The Faithful Couple. Snowdrops was a bestseller and was shortlisted for many prizes including the Man Booker and the CWA Gold Dagger. It was translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist A.D. Miller has travelled across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor based in London. 
 
admillerbooks.com

A. D. Miller

A. E. Ellis

A. E. W. Mason

A. Humphreys

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Nick Holt

You can never take what you love too seriously and The Periodic Table of Football celebrates this fact. 
 
Welcome to The Periodic Table of Football. Instead of hydrogen to helium, here you’ll find Pelé to Sepp Blatter – 108 elements from the football pantheon arranged by their properties and behaviour on and off the pitch. 
 
This expert guide spans over 150 years to offer an original perspective of the beautiful game.

The Periodic Table of FOOTBALL

Elmar Neveling

Updated to include Klopp&rsquo;s final season at Anfield 
 
&quot;It is the intensity of the football, of how the people live football in Liverpool, all the Liverpool fans around the world. It is not a normal club, it is a special club.&quot; Jürgen Klopp 
 
Jürgen Klopp&rsquo;s decision to leave Liverpool after nine incredible years shocked the football community. His tactical acumen, motivational skills and ability to develop young talent were instrumental in Liverpool's resurgence as a top team in English and European football. 
 
Before disrupting the game in England, the extraordinary manager had single-handedly overthrown the accepted order in the German league, taking Borussia Dortmund from nowhere to back-to-back Bundesliga titles. Then, in 2019, he cemented his name in the history books by returning Liverpool to Champions League glory, ending the club's 14-year wait for a major European trophy. Klopp was the mastermind behind Liverpool&rsquo;s Premier League title in the 2019-2020 season, a welcome return to the very heights of top flight football that saw his position as a Liverpool legend well and truly cemented in club history. 
 
Long after his departure, Klopp will continue to be revered as a master tactician with his own unique playing philosophies. His legacy among his players will be his passion and man-management skills, and he will forever be adored by fans for his charm, wit and thrilling football on the pitch. 
 
This is the definitive celebration of Jürgen Klopp, his down-to-earth nature and his footballing genius.

Jürgen Klopp

Peter Crouch

Shortlisted for the Sports Entertainment Book of the Year at the British Sports Book Awards 
 
The funniest man in British sport - Metro 
 
Peter Crouch is a comedy genius - Daily Mail 
 
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. Coddled by their support teams, everything is done for them. They live their lives in the glaring media spotlight, yet only really develop one life skill - how to kick a ball better. Then inevitably, when age catches up with them or injury strikes, these man-children are thrown out into the real world, utterly defenceless apart from their multi-million-pound bank accounts. 
 
So 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? 
 
Peter goes in search of the answer to what his second career might be and encounters stories far more bizarre than anything you'll find on the pitch. From the pleasure and pain of management to the lessons we can learn from Jamie Carragher and Joe Cole on not going to seed. From those staying in the sport - the diehard veterans, coaches, managers, owners and of course the legion of pundits, to those moving on to pastures new. Peter talks to entrepreneurs, men of the cloth, eco warriors, artists, private detectives and budding actors, as well as those who've lost their way in addiction, crime and NFTs. 
 
When the final whistle blows, it's still all to play for.

How to Be an Ex-Footballer

James Montague

'Passionate and moving and provides further evidence of the universality of football' Jonathan Wilson, FourFourTwo 
 
The definitive story of the Middle East's unstoppable rise to football superpower, and the road to the Qatar World Cup 
 
When James Montague first began covering football in the Middle East two decades ago, people asked him what future there could possibly be for the beautiful game in one of the most volatile regions in the world. In the years that followed, it would become one of the biggest stories in global sport, from the from revolutionary ultras of the Arab Spring and the takeover of some of the world's biggest clubs by the Emirati super rich, to Qatar's controversial journey towards hosting the 2022 World Cup finals. 
 
The only Western journalist covering the story on the ground from the very beginning, James Montague tells the definitive tale of the region's rise to ultimate power player in the global game in a fully revised and updated edition. Travelling to every country in the Middle East and meeting fans, players, workers and campaigners, he paints an unforgettable picture of football in a controversial, vibrant and surprising new world.

When Friday Comes

Football Revolution in the Middle East and the Road to Qatar

You can see them, but you don't know them. 
 
Ultras are football fans like no others. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time. 
 
1312: Among the Ultras tells the story of how the movement began and how it grew to become the global phenomenon that now dominates the stadiums from the Balkans and Buenos Aires. With unprecedented insider access, the book investigates how ultras have grown into a fiercely political movement, embracing extremes on both the left and right; fighting against the commercialisation of football and society – and against the attempts to control them by the authorities, who both covet and fear their power.

1312: Among the Ultras

A journey with the world’s most extreme fans

Harry Redknapp

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'The beautiful game has taught me a lot, but I’ve had quite a life outside of football too. This book is full of my best stories – kickabouts with jumpers for goalposts with Bobby Moore, mine and Sandra’s disastrous honeymoon to Torquay in a dodgy car and my funniest ‘Mr Pastry’ moments – as well as my thoughts on the important things in life. 
 
I’m finally sharing what I’ve learned on and off the pitch: from growing up poor in Poplar to the heights of the Premiership and even lying in a coffin with a load of rats on national television. It’s everything I know about true team spirit, hard work, tough times, why family are so important and why everyone deserves respect no matter whether they’re royal or sleeping rough – and, of course, the real joy of a jam roly-poly.'

The World According to Harry

**A Daily Mail Book of the Year** 
 
What happens on the pitch is only half the story. 
 
Being a footballer is not just kicking a ball about with twenty-one other people on a big grass rectangle. Sometimes being a footballer is about accidentally becoming best mates with Mickey Rourke, or understanding why spitting is considered football’s most heinous crime. 
 
In How to be a Footballer, Peter Crouch took us into a world of bad tattoos and even worse haircuts, a world where you’re on the pitch one minute, spending too much money on a personalised number plate the next. In I, Robot, he lifts the lid even further on the beautiful game. We will learn about Gareth Bale’s magic beans, the Golden Rhombus of Saturday night entertainment, and why Crouchy’s dad walks his dog wearing an England tracksuit from 2005. 
 
Whether you’re an armchair expert, or out in the stands every Saturday, crazy for five-a-side or haven’t put on a pair of boots since school, this is the real inside story of how to be a footballer.

I, Robot

How to Be a Footballer 2

'Very funny on almost every page, wonderfully self-deprecating and very sharp on the ludicrous behaviour of the modern player' - Sunday Times 
 
'The funniest man in British sport' - Metro 
 
**A Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year** 
**Shortlisted for the National Book Awards** 
**Longlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year** 
 
You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you're suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. 
 
So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. 
 
We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We'll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benitez and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions. 
 
I am Peter Crouch. This is How To Be A Footballer. Shall we?

How to Be a Footballer

Ebury Press

Football. Bloody hell.' 
 
The longest serving and most successful manager in British football history shocked the world by finally retiring in May 2013 and instantly created more column inches and twitter mentions that the death of Margaret Thatcher. And he wasn’t just the greatest, but also one of the most outspoken, engaging and witty voices from the game, as this book proves. Here is the history of his supreme verbal sparring during his years at Manchester United - the man in his own words (with a few additional thoughts from those who knew him best and crossed swords with him most). 
 
'There's nothing wrong with losing your temper once in a while if it's for the right reasons' 
 
'If he was an inch taller he’d be the best centre-half in Britain. His father is 6ft 2in – I’d check the milkman' 
On Gary Neville 
 
'He could start a row in an empty house' 
On Denis Wise 
 
'The list of gentle, naturally retiring men who have been successful in their attempts at running clubs isn't a long one, is it?

The Alex Ferguson Quote Book

The Greatest Manager in His Own Words

Spencer FC

How one man went from gaming and making videos at home to becoming a football club owner 
 
'The bizarre new world of football' Guardian 
 
I lifted the trophy triumphantly over my head, just as I’d seen so many FA Cup, World Cup and Champions League winners do on TV. It was quite simply the best moment of my life. Hashtag United had won. 
 
So, how on earth did this happen? How did a kid who at one point couldn’t even get in his school team end up playing at Wembley Stadium in front of 20,000 people? How did someone who spent his life playing computer games get to play football in the same side as World Cup- and Champions League-winning players? 
 
I'm hardly sure myself. But here's my attempt to tell the story.

Gamechanger

From playing FIFA to owning my own club

Patrick Fort

Jean Philippe

Get inside the mind of football's most enigmatic icon 
 
‘Zidane is the master’ Pele 
 
One of modern football’s most brilliant players - and one of its most iconic and mysterious figures - Zinedine Zidane’s football career is the stuff of legend. A World Cup-winner with France, he became the world's most expensive player in 2001 when he moved from Juventus to Real Madrid for £46million, where his exceptional talent earned him a reputation as one of the greatest players of all-time. His playing career concluded explosively when he retired after being sent off for head-butting Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final. 
 
But his football career was far from over. After a spell coaching in Spain, he was appointed manager of Real Madrid in 2015 and immediately demonstrated that his skill as a manager matched his talent on the pitch, leading the team to successive Champions League victories and establishing him as one of the new managerial greats. 
 
Rarely speaking to the press, Zidane is known as a man who ‘speaks only with the ball’. In this definitive biography, Patrick Fort and Jean Philippe take us behind the scenes of his exceptional career, revealing the man behind the legend.

Zidane

Patrick Barclay

The Man Who Made A Football Club 
 
Sir Matt Busby, who took Manchester United to unprecedented glory before seeing the club through profound tragedy, created the global entity that spreads from Old Trafford today. 
 
A player with Manchester City and Liverpool before the Second World War, Busby remained at the forefront of football through four decades and made an extraordinary contribution to the game in terms of both style and substance. In this definitive biography, Patrick Barclay looks back at Busby’s phenomenal life and career, including the rise of the Busby Babes in the 1950s, the Munich disaster that claimed 23 lives and the Wembley victory ten years on that made United the first English team to win the European Cup. Denis Law, Pat Crerand and such other members of that great side as Alex Stepney, David Sadler and John Aston are among the host of voices testifying to the qualities that set Sir Matt apart. 
 
This is the story of one of the greatest figures in football history, and of the making of a legacy that will last for ever.

Sir Matt Busby

The Man Who Made a Football Club

The Definitive Biography

Neal Heard

They think it’s all over…it is now, with this comprehensive guide to football shirts through the years. 
 
From the obscure to the ubiquitous, The Football Shirts Book is packed with over 150 original and super rare shirts from the greatest game on earth. Covering everything from the iconic to the unusual, even the most hard-core fans will find out something new about the kit of their favourite team. 
 
Including full-colour photography, as well as interviews with football shirt design teams, musicians, and fashion designers, this guide offers a full exploration of the brands, design, and sponsorship history behind the world’s best-loved football shirts. 
 
It is a must-have for those crazy about football shirts, as well as those whose interest is piqued by history, design, and pop-culture.

The Football Shirts Book

After 40 years in football management, there’s not a lot I haven’t seen. There’ve been big highs, but a fair share of lows too. When I have to make difficult decisions, I make a point of avoiding newspapers, phone-ins, Twitter – all of it. But there’s always a load of armchair-pundits waiting to start on me. Being a manager has never been easy, but between the fans and the media it often feels impossible to get it right. 
 
In It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager, I talk about how different the job is now from what it was like when I used to play. For one, managers used to drive up and down motorways all day to scout for players – now there’s so much analysis and global scouting. It’s a different thing, completely. In this book, I share everything I’ve learnt from a lifetime of both wins and losses, and wisdom from greats like Cloughie and Ferguson. I’ll tell you about what actually happens in the dressing room, including when Clough smashed the door off its hinges; the bust-ups at full-time, like when I kicked a tray of sandwiches on Don Hutchinson’s head; and the times when I had to swap an arm round a player’s shoulder for a boot up the arse. It’s my guide to being a manager, the Harry way.

It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager

Ian Hawkey

'Better than Pele' - Diego Maradona 
 
'One of the greatest footballers ever.' - Sir Alex Ferguson 
 
Pele, Best and Maradona everyone has heard of, but to the true football cognoscenti Alfredo Di Stefano, the magician behind Real Madrid’s five European Cups in a row, is the greatest of them all. 
 
Over 20 years, Di Stéfano was the guiding force behind three teams in three countries: at River Plate in his native Argentina; at Millonarios of Bogotá in Colombia; and then in 1953, after one of the most bitter transfer tug-of-wars in sporting history, Real Madrid. There he became football’s first global icon, nicknamed the striking ‘Blond Arrow’ for his powerful stamina, tactical versatility and precision goal scoring. He would lead Madrid as a team whose playing style others learnt from, whose stylishness was envied and whose widespread appreciation elsewhere help portray Franco’s otherwise isolated and right-wing Spain in a more flattering light. 
 
By the time he retired, Di Stefano has changed Spain as a nation, culturally and politically, and his rebellious pioneering career set new benchmarks for his sport in the epoch of perhaps football’s greatest transformation. This is his complete story, including candid and exclusive interviews highlighting his journey from humble beginnings to emerging as one of the first global sport superstars that we so commonly see today.

Di Stéfano

Jamie Vardy

The Sunday Times Bestseller and Number 1 Sport Book of 2016 
 
'A tale that's truly inspirational' The Sun 
 
An ordinary lad from Sheffield, Jamie Vardy has become known as an against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Yet a few years ago, things couldn’t have been any more different. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Jamie thought his chance was gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels, while still working in a factory, his off-the-cuff performances saw him rise. 
 
Jamie had a wild and turbulent youth, but football became his saving grace and, once he filled his boots with goals at FC Halifax Town and Fleetwood Town, he moved to Leicester City. After the miracle of surviving relegation, the team of unlikely outsiders bonded together to achieve the unthinkable: Jamie set the record as the first player to score in 11 consecutive Premier League matches and Leicester beat odds of 5000-1 to become champions. 
 
Jamie has now been nominated for the Ballon d’Or, firmly establishing himself as one of England’s leading goal scoring footballers. Not forgetting his roots, however, he has set up the V9 Academy in a bid to find the next big talent from non-league football. Defying all expectations, this is the story of the boy from nowhere who reached the top in his own unflinching, honest words.

Jamie Vardy: From Nowhere, My Story

Packie Bonner

Irish national hero, a Celtic great and their most-capped player, Patrick 'Packie' Bonner is a goalkeeping legend. 
 
He was Jock Stein's last signing for the club when he left his native Donegal for the city of Glasgow in 1978, where Packie evolved from being a shy, homesick teenager into a confident, world-class talent and first-choice goalkeeper. Billy McNeill handed him a debut on St Patrick's Day in 1979, and Packie went on to provide the last line of defence a record 641 times for the club. A seasoned Irish internationalist, Packie was a vital component in the most-celebrated Irish national squad ever, playing in a golden era under the tutelage of the inimitable Jack Charlton. 
 
In The Last Line, Packie shares stories from his incredible career, including his greatest moment in front of a global audience during the Italia '90 World Cup tournament when he became the penalty shoot-out hero of the nation by saving a spot-kick that took the Irish to the quarter-finals stage in their very first World Cup adventure. 
 
It was an iconic moment that would change his life forever not least because, whilst in Italy, he, along with his teammates, had an audience with another goalkeeper, Pope John Paul II. 
 
Throughout his 80 cap international career, he competed against the very best in the world. Men such as Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten, Gheorghe Hagi, Roberto Baggio and Gary Lineker came to know the name Packie Bonner. Equally, in his glittering Celtic career that included the winning of four Scottish League titles, three Scottish Cups and one Scottish League Cup, Packie Bonner played alongside some great Celtic names like Tommy Burns, Paul McStay, and Murdo Macleod. 
Along the way, Packie had to endure a career-threatening back injury, as well as the devastation of a routine save going wrong and costing a goal on the world stage against Holland in 1994, ultimately leading to elimination from the World Cup in America. 
 
More than just the telling of trophies, titles and triumphs, this is the story of a Celtic legend and a true great of Irish International football.

The Last Line: My Autobiography

Maarten Meijer

So who is Louis van Gaal? An inflexible ex-PE teacher who only knows how to act like a dictator or a footballing visionary that has made him one of the greatest ever European managers? 
 
 Wherever he has gone, Van Gaal has been accused of being a domineering disciplinarian and a control freak. He is certainly, by his own admission, a man who leaves nothing to chance. A disciple in the 1970s of Rinus Michels’ Total Football philosophy, he is a fascinating contradiction – an ultra-individualist utterly devoted to the collective effort. He believes in the team over the individual, in always having a plan and a team prepared to follow it. Van Gaal led the young Ajax team he moulded to Champions League glory in 1995, went on to win titles across Europe with Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich and served two stints as national coach of Holland. It is a career that has never been short on colour and drama – from fallouts with players to rants at the media wherever he has managed. 
 
Dutch football commentator Maarten Meijer’s has written the definitive biography of van Gaal – both the man and his methods. It offers the best psychological insight so far – from his earliest roots to his greatest triumphs – into the man given the task of returning the glory days to Manchester United. 
 
**New chapter on Louis van Gaal's first season with Manchester United**

Louis van Gaal

The Biography

‘When a man walks on to a pitch there’s always a chance something magic can happen, that’s what keeps us coming back…’ 
 
In A Man Walks On To a Pitch, Harry shares a lifetime’s experience of obsessing over football, during which he has seen it all first hand – the good, the bad and the unbelievable. Harry started in an age where players were ordinary blokes who might live on the same street as you and earn a similar wage. Now he manages in an era of player power, multi-million pound wages and teams assembled from around the globe. 
 
As he shares stories of some of the legends and journeymen he played, coached, argued and drank with, Harry picks a team for each decade from the 1950s to the present. He gets to the heart of what was right and wrong with each era and explores the changes in the game from lifestyle to tactics. He weaves his choices together with unforgettable tales from the training pitches, boot rooms and card schools. 
 
There are tales of the untutored genius of Duncan Edwards and Tom Finney, legendary tough Scots like Bobby Collins, Dave Mackay and Billy Bremner, the world-beaters of 1966, unpredictable one-off wizards from Sir Stanley Matthews to Matt Le Tissier, natural-born goalscorers from Greaves to Dalglish and the greatest foreign players to grace our game from Trautmann to Bergkamp. It is one of the best informal histories of the British game you’ll ever read.

A Man Walks On To a Pitch

Stories from a Life in Football

Phil Shaw

The greatest football quotations collection ever, now in its ninth edition. 
This compilation includes quotes from everyone – Shakespeare to Suarez, Camus to Cantona, Busby to Beckham – who has made an apt, pithy or comical comment about football. And not just footballers and managers either – fans, pundits, groundsmen, directors and wives all get to have their say too. Every subject is covered, from tactical debates to changing lifestyles, to produce a sometimes hilarious and always thought-provoking commentary on the game. 
 
‘My players are always the best players in the world, even if they aren’t’ - José Mourinho 
 
‘He was a quiet man, Eric Cantona, but he was a man of few words’ - David Beckham 
 
‘Sometimes when you aim for the stars you hit the moon’ - Ian Holloway

The Book of Football Quotations

James Bannon

'Of course I'm a f**king hooligan, you pr**k. I am a hooligan...there I've said it...I'm a hooligan. And, do you know why? Because that's my f**king job.' 
 
In 1995, a film called I.D., about an ambitious young copper who was sent undercover to track down the ‘generals’ of a football hooligan gang, achieved cult status for its sheer brutality and unsettling insight into the dark and often bloody side of the so-called beautiful game. 
 
The film was so shocking it was hard to believe the mindless events that took place could ever happen in the real world. Well, believe it now... 
 
Almost twenty years on, the man behind the film has explosively revealed that the script was largely a true story. That man, James Bannon, was the ambitious undercover cop. The football club was Millwall F.C. and the gang that he infiltrated was The Bushwackers, among the most brutal and fearless in English football. 
 
In Running with the Firm, Bannon shares his intense and dangerous journey into the underworld of football hooliganism where sickening levels of violence prevail over anything else. He introduces you to the hardest thugs from football’s most notorious gangs, tells all about the secret and almost comical police operations that were meant to bring them down, and, how once you’re on the inside, getting out from the mob proves to be the biggest mission of all. 
 
A disturbing but compelling read, this is the book that proves fact really is stranger than fiction.

Running with the Firm

The Sunday Times no.1 bestselling memoir from Harry Redknapp 
 
‘From kicking a ball as a kid under the street lamps of Poplar and standing on Highbury's North Bank with my dad, to my first game at West Ham, I was born head over heels in love with football. It saved me, and 50 years on that hasn't changed one bit - I'd be lost without it…’ 
 
Harry is the manager who has seen it all - from a dismal 70s Portakabin at Oxford City and training pitches with trees in the middle to the unbeatable highs of the Premiership, lifting the FA Cup and taking on Real Madrid in the Champions League. With his much loved, no-nonsense delivery, Harry brings us a story filled with passion and humour that takes you right inside every drama of his career. 
 
Harry finally tells the full story of all the controversial ups and downs - the pain and heartache of his court case, the England job, his love for Bobby Moore, his adventures at Portsmouth with Milan Mandaric, the Southampton debacle, Tottenham and Daniel Levy, and not forgetting his years at West Ham or the challenges at his current club QPR. 
 
It’s the epic journey of one of the great managers and, along the way, the story of the British game itself over the last five decades. In an era now dominated by foreign coaches Harry is the last of an old-fashioned breed of English football man - one who has managed to move with the times and always come out fighting.

Always Managing

My Autobiography

Don Shaw

Clough's War is the story of his epic ascent and decline at Derby County, a club he took in a few short years from nowhere to the top English football and teetering on greatness in Europe, before the whole dream came tumbling down in the national spotlight with his acrimonious resignation in 1973. It is the story of his rise to national fame, his almost messianic adoration at Derby and his jealous political tussle with the chairman Sam Longson and the ultimate fall of Clough's unchecked power. Award-winning script writer and lifelong Rams fan Don Shaw, was the man who, at Clough's behest, ran the campaign to keep Clough at Derby and who found himself almost in the spotlight as much as the great man himself. It is a tale dramatised with all the power of Greek tragedy and the Machiavellian intrigue of All The President's Men, while shedding new light on the Clough legend like no other book before it.

Clough's War

Danny Baker

Danny Kelly

At last! The award-winning Baker &amp; Kelly bring you the most entertaining, radical and unreliable football book ever published. The Two Dannys argue the toss, spill the beans and chew that fat about everything and anything from the biggest questions down to stuff they have frankly invented themselves. 
 
Which club has the handsomest fans? Who is the greatest player of all time? Pele? Maradona? Puskas? Rougvie? Have foreign players helped or hindered the English game? Well, Marco Boogers, well? And who was the greatest football dad, Fred Baker or Andy Kelly? 
 
Now with even more footballing facts, myths and legends, the paperback asks (and answers) hard-hitting questions, such as, what was the greatest ever World Cup? Just how much pathetic World Cup tat can one own, Danny Kelly? And where do all those beautiful women in the crowd come from? 
 
A cornucopia of footballing fun and well-crafted wisdom that is certain to sell like beer-flavoured crisps. Baker &amp; Kelly: Sometimes right sometimes wrong - but always certain.

Classic Football Debates Settled Once and For All, Vol.1

My parents have always been there for me, ever since I was about seven - David Beckham 
 
For Tony to admit he is an alcoholic took an awful lot of bottle - Ian Wright on Tony Adams 
 
I've been playing in a golf day for a boy seriously injured in a car accident. I had to drive like a lunatic to get here - Ray Houghton, TalkSport football pundit, on why he was late on-air 
 
Reporter: What would you be if you weren't a footballer? 
Peter Crouch: A virgin. 
 
I've never been so certain about anything in my life. I want to be a coach. Or a manager. I'm not sure which - Phil Neville 
 
Footballers may not be known for their profound insights, but it seems no one in the game is above a mixed metaphor or confused cliché. From Harry Redknapp to Martin O'Neill, Patrice Evra to Jason McAteer, see the funny side of the beautiful game with this hilarious collection of verbal own goals. Packed full of hilarious quotes, quips and misfires from the biggest names in football, Tell Him He's Pele is a must for everyone with a sense of humour.

Tell Him He's Pele

The Greatest Collection of Humorous Football Quotations Ever!

Ian Rush

In 2006, Liverpool fans voted Ian Rush among the top three all-time greatest players in the history of the club. Taking his place alongside Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard, he surpassed football legends such as Fowler, Keegan, Owen, Smith, Carragher and Hansen. Ian Rush is quite simply Liverpool's greatest goalscorer and, along with Jimmy Greaves and Denis Law, one of the finest natural penalty-box predators the game has ever seen. 
 
This is the story of a rough-edged Welsh teenager thrust into the ranks of an already great side, who didn't feel up to it, but who learned how to grow as a player and a man until he became the most devastating finisher in English football. Rush's story is bursting with honesty and insight, emotional turmoil and tragedy, and hilarious tales and asides. It is a near-mythical tale of triumph and tragedy. Of an era when Liverpool FC became nigh on invincible, made the League title their own, and rode the highs of European and FA Cup Finals alongside the devastating tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough. The drama of Rush's time at Liverpool during the 80s - the decade that defined the club more than any other - is thrillingly captured in this autobiography, which takes you into the thick of the action, as well as offering a frank and insightful analysis of football today.

Rush

The Autobiography

Paddy Agnew

When journalist Paddy Agnew and his girlfriend Dympna touched down in Rome in 1985 in search of adventure, sunshine and the soul of Italian football (well, Paddy was looking for that), they were travelling into the uncharted terrain of a country they did not know and a language they did not speak. 
 
It soon became clear that neither Italy nor Italian football would be boring. In that first week in Italy, Michel Platini and Juventus won the Intercontinental Cup, whilst just days later the PLO killed 13 people in a random shooting at Rome's Fiumicino airport. Paddy covered both stories. The coming years saw the rise of TV tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, as he became owner of AC Milan and then Prime Minister of Italy, naming his political party 'Forza Italia' after a football chant. In that same period, Argentine Diego Maradona became the uncrowned King of Naples, leading Napoli to a first ever Scudetto title in 1987, notwithstanding a hectic, Hollywood-esque lifestyle that mixed footballing genius with off-the-field excess. 
 
Forza Italia is a fascinating tale of inspired players, skilled coaches, rich tycoons, glitzy media coverage, Mafia corruption, allegations of drug taking and fan power - culminating in the 2006 World Cup victory that delighted a nation and a match-fixing scandal that shocked the world. It is also a personalised reflection on the consistent and continuing excellence of Italian football throughout a period of huge social, political and economic upheaval, offering a unique insight into a society where football has always been much more than just a game.

Forza Italia

The Fall and Rise of Italian Football

Tony Hawks

'All I knew about Moldova were the names of eleven men printed on the inside back pages of my newspaper. None of them sounded to me like they were any good at tennis ...' 
 
An eccentric wager finds Tony Hawks, a man who loves an unusual challenge, bound for the little-known Eastern European state of Moldova. His mission: to track down members of the country's football team and persuade them to play him at tennis. The bizarre quest ultimately has little to do with tennis or football, but instead turns into an extraordinary journey involving the Moldovan underworld, gypsies, chronic power shortages, near kidnap, and a surprisingly tender relationship with his host family. 
 
Follow the fortunes of Tony in this hilarious and often moving adventure as it takes him from Moldova, onwards to Northern Ireland, leading to an exciting denouement in Nazareth - and the naked truth of the bet's final outcome ...

Playing the Moldovans at Tennis

Barney Ronay

Fast approaching 30, Barney Ronay is a Sunday League left back with some tough choices to make. Is staying in with his girlfriend and Gardeners' World on a Friday night doing much for his match fitness? Would he be better off back with his best mate Dan in the bachelor pad of pizza boxes, lager and Playstation into the early hours? And at their age can they still afford to spend weekends in their desperate struggle to keep Bolingbroke Athletic afloat? Shouldn't they be growing up, getting married, spending their Sundays at Homebase? 
 
This is the hilarious story of a team in early mid-life crisis, hiding from responsibility in the strange masochism at the ugly end of the beautiful game - the smell of Deep Heat, naked fat men, hangovers and the eternal belief that next week you might just rediscover your first touch.

Any Chance Of A Game?

George Best

'We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others' George Best 
 
Written in the months before he died, Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths is George's farewell letter to the great footballing era in which he burned so brightly - a personal history of the golden years before TV and agents changed everything. From the breaking of the maximum wage to the cusp of the first million-pound player, it follows the triumphs and tragedies of every season from 1960 to 1974. It is the story of our greatest footballing generation - Greaves, Moore, Law, Charlton, Osgood, Lorimer, Jennings, Hurst and, of course, Best himself.

Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths

The inside story of football's golden era

The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. Discover the 1Q84 Trilogy by Haruki Murakami.

1Q84

365 Days of Art

A BBC Christmas

A Black Book Thriller

A Box Full of Murders

A Cal Leandros Novel

A Christmas Mystery

The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice.

A Commissario Brunetti Mystery

A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

A Daisy Story

Chronicling the lives of over three hundred characters, unrivalled for its scope and humour, this is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England.

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter