Unofficial Football World Champions


Book Description

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.




Now You Know Absolutely Everything


Book Description

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




Now You Know Soccer


Book Description

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?




Savage Enthusiasm


Book Description

How did we become football fans? Savage Enthusiasm traces the evolution of the football fan from the sport's earliest origins right up to the present day, exploring how football became the world's most popular spectator sport, and why it became the undisputed game of the people.




World Football Club Crests


Book Description

An illustrated exploration of the design, meaning and symbolism of world football club crests. Why is there a devil shown on the crest of Manchester United? Which club's crest motto is 'To Dare Is To Do'? And whose emblem depicts a bear and a strawberry tree? From the seahorses of Newcastle United to the royal crown of Real Madrid, via the riveting hammers of West Ham United, Valencia's famous bat design and German club St Pauli's unofficial skull-and-crossbones emblem, there is a story behind every crest, a tale of identity. Covering more than 200 clubs from 20 different leagues, World Football Club Crests explores the design, meaning and symbolism of the game's most famous club crests to reveal why the badges look as they do. This carefully curated collection charts the continuing evolution of the designs and describes the changing styles, varied influences and remarkable controversies that have shaped football's most iconic crests. These important symbols of football heraldry will never be viewed in the same way again.




The Rag Boiler's Daughter


Book Description

A sweeping account of Irish and Scottish families, The Rag Boiler's Daughter portrays one woman's resolve to provide her children with a brighter future. This story follows Maggie Gilliland from her birth in Denny, Scotland in 1865 and spans the factories of 19th Century Scotland, the Irish War of Independence, two world wars and a family's migration to Lithgow, Australia. The daughter of a rag boiler and an iron miner, Maggie herself was the mother of seventeen children - nearly half of whom she buried. Touched by an epic string of losses and blessings, Maggie strove towards the hope of giving her surviving children a better life as she gave them the very best of herself. Maggie's story is timeless. Starting with the determination of working class people to improve their conditions, this story begins with Maggie's mother insisting that her daughter learn to read. With succinct historic accounts coloured by intimate emotional conflicts, Shepheard draws a map around her family history, inviting readers to glimpse a portrait familiar to so many whose common roots meet as the children of migrants. As one of the 2011 IP Picks judges raved: 'By the end of the story, I am in love with this family, their curious and complex relationships and their unabated hope'.




All With Smiling Faces


Book Description

An early history of Newcastle United, investigating how the football club came to mean so much to so many supporters. How did Newcastle become United? When was the club formed, and where did it play before moving to St James' Park? Who were the men who built the club, and how did they turn it into the most successful club in the country? What was it like to support Newcastle in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and why has the bond between the club and its fans remained so strong? All With Smiling Faces takes a wander through the early history of Newcastle United to discover how the club came to mean so much to so many. Covering the club's first 30 years, from its foundation as Stanley FC in 1881 to its triumphant FA Cup win in 1910, the book visits the grounds, meets the players, mingles with the fans, and relives the matches that helped make Newcastle United.




Now You Know — Giant Sports Trivia Bundle


Book Description

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




Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup


Book Description

October 10, 2017. The U.S. men’s soccer team loses in Trinidad and Tobago, and fails to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Winning soccer’s greatest prize never seemed more distant. Immediate fixes—a new coach, a revamped professional league, a commitment to coaching education—won’t put the USA in the global elite. The nation is too fractious, too litigious, too wrapped up in other sports, and too late to the game. In Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup: A Historical and Cultural Reality Check, Beau Dure shows what American soccer is really up against. Using hundreds of sources to trace more than 100 years of history, Dure delves into the culture that only recently lost its disdain for the global game and still doesn’t have the depth of soccer insight and passion that much of the world has had for generations. The difficulty isn’t any single thing—the mismanagement of failed leagues, the inability to agree on a path forward, the lawsuits that stem from an inability to agree, or the unique American culture that treasures its homegrown sports. It’s everything. And yet, Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup is ultimately optimistic. Dure argues that with the right long-term changes, the U.S. can build a soccer environment that consistently produces quality players, strong results, and a lot more fun on the international stage. Soccer fans and skeptics alike will find this a fascinating examination of America’s past, present, and future in the beautiful game.




The World’s First Football Superstar


Book Description

Buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of the small village of Benson in Oxfordshire lies the body of a footballing world champion from a bygone era shrouded in the mists of time. His name was Stephen Smith. This footballer of the Victorian and Edwardian era could claim as many league title winning medals as John Terry and Wayne Rooney, more league winners medals than Eric Cantona, Frank Lampard, Cristiano Ronaldo, Thierry Henry and Alan Shearer. This book is the never before told story of a footballer born at the end of the Industrial Revolution, son of agricultural labourers who became a miner, working underground combining that job with one as a professional footballer to rise to the top of the footballing world. Smith won trophy after trophy in the best and only professional league anywhere in the world at that time. He also scored the goal that made England World Champions in 1895. Smith, at the top of his game in a move that mirrored the Premier League breakaway of 1992 and the recent ill-fated European Super League then joined the newly formed Southern League at a time when the Football League started to cap player wages. He did this in order to ensure his family’s future as well as end his reliance on his part-time earnings from mining. Football’s zeitgeist has fundamentally changed very little in the last 130 years for those inside the industry. This is the story of Stephen Smith and the quest to find the support and funds to mark and commemorate one of the most decorated yet underappreciated footballers in the history of the game.