The Suburban Footballer


Book Description

Tom Siegert is The Suburban FootballerTom was a below average junior player and his career has been in free fall ever since. It is the final round of the season and once again he finds himself in the familiar position of warming the interchange bench. It's freezing cold, rain is tumbling down and his head is thumping with his worst hangover since last week. As he sits, wishing he was anywhere but playing a game of footy, he wonders why he does it to himself. Should this be his final season or should he go around one last time?




The Suburban


Book Description




Football and Colonialism


Book Description

In articles for the newspaper O Brado Africano in the mid-1950s, poet and journalist José Craveirinha described the ways in which the Mozambican football players in the suburbs of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) adapted the European sport to their own expressive ends. Through gesture, footwork, and patois, they used what Craveirinha termed “malice”—or cunning—to negotiate their places in the colonial state. “These manifestations demand a vast study,” Craveirinha wrote, “which would lead to a greater knowledge of the black man, of his problems, of his clashes with European civilization, in short, to a thorough treatise of useful and instructive ethnography.” In Football and Colonialism, Nuno Domingos accomplishes that study. Ambitious and meticulously researched, the work draws upon an array of primary sources, including newspapers, national archives, poetry and songs, and interviews with former footballers. Domingos shows how local performances and popular culture practices became sites of an embodied history of Mozambique. The work will break new ground for scholars of African history and politics, urban studies, popular culture, and gendered forms of domination and resistance.




Following the Ball


Book Description

With Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal’s African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal’s increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusébio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal’s empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players’ transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.




Me, Family and the Making of a Footballer


Book Description

'a wonderful book ... a great read' Daily Mail 'a fascinating book ... I really enjoyed it' Piers Morgan, Good Morning Britain 'a heart-warming, funny and insightful read. Perfect for a rainy day by the fire.' FourFourTwo magazine One of the Guardian's 'Biggest Books of Autumn 2020' 'A beautiful book about football, family, friendship and finding out who you really are.' JACK WHITEHALL 'One of the best books I've ever read about what it takes to become a pro.' FRANK LAMPARD For the Redknapp clan, football is a family concern; it's the family business. Me, Family and the Making of a Footballer is a deeply moving, heartfelt and beautifully personal account of growing up as the second son of Harry Redknapp, and also an enchanting love letter to football. "I'm Jamie Redknapp. Chances are my surname rings a bell. I want to introduce you to a colourful cast of characters from my formative years. Growing up, Dad and grandad 'Pop' told us tall stories from London's East End, but there was no artistic licence needed when I was actually kicking a ball about with legends like George Best, Bobby Moore, and Geoff Hurst. This book is the story of my childhood and adolescence. Like many others, I guess it's a pretty typical mix of caravans and lollies, sweaty T-shirts and paper rounds, cheese sandwiches and Glacier Mints, The A Team, E.T. and Chinese takeaways. But this is also the story of a journey through an extraordinary childhood obsession with football. One minute it was all about Shoot! magazine, endless keepy-ups and countless impromptu kickabouts. The next, I'm playing for Bournemouth Reserves against terrifying, fully-grown men. Then I got my move to Kenny Dalglish's Liverpool. I might've been living off gristly sausages and Smash potato in my dingy digs up on Merseyside, but I was living the dream. I was desperately hoping it was the start of something special. Writing Me, Family and the Making of a Footballer has helped me discover so much about myself. This book is my way of explaining who and what have made me ... well, me."




The Footballer of Loos


Book Description

The Germans fighting on two fronts were concentrating in the east where the Russians were weakening. In the west, the Allied effort was met with well prepared German defences, and efforts to open a new front on the Gallipoli Peninsula had foundered. Decisive action to break the deadlock on the Western Front saw a mighty attack of six British divisions planned for the autumn of 1915 in the vicinity of the small mining community of Loos en Gohelle where 'The Big Push' would begin. The bitter recriminations that followed the perceived failure reduced the Battle of Loos to a footnote in the history of the Great War for many decades. Entirely lost in translation has been the Boys' Own tale of the Tommy who kicked a football ahead of the charge. That soldier was identified as Rifleman Frank Edwards, and through his original research, Ed Harris clearly establishes for the first time that the first great attack by the British army was begun when Edwards kicked a football towards the German lines. Harris sheds light on what it was like to be a part of this crucial battle and questions the largely held view that Loos was a failure, using material sourced from a wide variety of sources form the Imperial War Museum to the National Football Museum.




European Heroes


Book Description

Historians of popular culture have recently been addressing the role of myth, and now it is time that social historians of sport also examined it. The contributors to this collection of essays explore the symbolic meanings that have been attached to sport in Europe by considering some of the mythic heroes who have dominated the sporting landscapes of their own countries. The ambition is to understand what these icons stood for in the eyes of those who watched or read about these vessels into which poured all manner of gender, class and patriotic expectations.




The Rough Guide to Cult Football


Book Description

The Ultimate Companion to A Beautiful Game This new Rough Guide is the only soccer book of its kind. It uncovers the most amazing stories and the unlikeliest personalities on Planet Football, both past and present, that help to make soccer the greatest show on earth. We reveal the stories behind the mavericks and cult figures who make up the real heroes of the game - from cultured midfielders to jailbirds, drinkers to straight arrows, local legends to international wanderers. The book showcases an amazing and unusual roll-call of talent that stretches from Ferenc Puskas to Stan Bowles, Eric Cantona to Jose Chilavert and Garrincha to Perry Groves. Throughout, we run our eye over the special clubs - from the New York Cosmos to Berwick Rangers and Estudiantes; managers and football rivalries - from 'El Clásico' to the Faroe Islands derby; and recall extraordinary games from 'The Battle of Highbury' to underdog fixtures where the likes of Northern Ireland, Wimbledon, and Dynamo Kiev overcame the might of Spain, Liverpool, and the Nazis. Post-match analyses of football culture, ephemera, science, and some strange statistics, complete this ultimate fiesta of football fun. "Ain't it great to be alive? All you need is the green grass and a ball" -Pele




Johnno


Book Description

Brad Johnson grew up in Melbourne's western suburbs, never dreaming he'd one day become captain of the Western Bulldogs and the club's games record holder. He's the Doggies' pin-up boy – a true working-class man - known as the 'smiling assassin'. But beware of the dog. Behind that broad smile lies a steely determination to succeed. Johnno's durability and consistency over a sixteen-year career have made him a widely respected player and a great leader, on and off the field. He has witnessed the club's transformation from a culture of losing to one of winning, within reach of its second premiership. Johnno has great stories to tell about his teammates - the early days were shared with Dougie Hawkins and Libba - and he played with many 300-plus game legends (Chris Grant, Scott West and Rohan Smith). He was part of the club when Ted Whitten lost his battle with cancer. Brad has a candid view on coaching, having played under three different coaches (Terry Wallace, Peter Rhode, Rodney 'Rocket' Eade). He's seen his beloved club almost go under, and he's captained it through its resurrection. This is the story of the Western Bulldogs' last two decades, as seen through the eyes of its favourite son.




Comeback


Book Description

As a boy, James Button fell in love with the Geelong Football Club. It was a family affair. But as the years wore on and the defeats and disappointments mounted, it became clear to him: his team would never win a flag. This book tells the story of his glorious mistake. Writing as a reporter, not primarily as a fan, James interviews hundreds of people to tell the story of how one organisation changed its culture, on and off the field. He relates not only the fortunes of the team over fifty years but of the town with which it is so closely entwined. And he tries to explain why so many of us, whoever we barrack for, are gripped by an unreasonable passion for football.