Product Description
A revised edition of the history of Britain's best-supported football club. The story is brought up to date with information about the record-breaking Cole transfer, the emergence of the talents of Butt, Scholes and the Nevilles, and the 1995/96 title race. ... Read more

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Leah Lauber's true adventure following the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team, as a fan and 12-year old Junior Reporter for the St. Petersburg (FL) Times, as the Team prepares for, and ultimately wins, the history-making 1999 Women's World Cup!

The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team proved that dreams DO come true, IF you love what you do, AND you work really hard at it! My unlikely-but-true story following the Team further proves that dreams come true . . .

The 1999 Women's World Cup is widely regarded as a milestone in women's sports and "Soccer Dreams" takes the reader on a journey any sports fan could only dream about - not only meeting her heroes at their finest moment, but interviewing them for one of the country's best newspapers. Leah's incredible adventure takes the reader to games, training sessions, into the locker room and under the press tent after the ultimate victory over China.

Illustrated with more than 200 color photos throughout the book, "Soccer Dreams" will inspire readers of all ages to follow their own dreams, using not only the example of the National Team, but in a much smaller way, Leah's story as she overcomes setbacks andobstacles to witness sports history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (23)

Great first book!
If you're a girl who dreams of writing books, check out this cool one by a 12-year-old. Read it from cover to cover. Look at the photos. See how it's organized. You'll not only get inspired and get a feeling for what it takes, you'll also learn alot about soccer. Good job, Leah!--Catherine Dee, author of The Girls' Book of Wisdom and The Girls' Guide to Life

A True Story Well Told
When I got ready to read Soccer Dreams, I wasn't sure if it was something that would interest me.I'm not much of a sports person and know almost nothing about soccer.I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I didn't need to know anything about sports at all to enjoy the book.

While the book is about 12-year-old Leah's experiences reporting on the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team for the St. Petersburg Times, it is also about a girl following her dreams.Leah takes the reader with her as she applies to be a reporter for the newspaper's X-Press Team -- a select group of kids who write a special section of the paper on various topics for other kids.A soccer player since she was seven, Leah is able to meet the players, cover the team's practices and be there for their victory at the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Championship.Like any good book, the story has its ups and downs, its victories and defeats, but it is real life, and seeing it through Leah's eyes makes it all the more real.

I very much enjoyed reading the book, as well as seeing the letters and newspaper columns she wrote, the tickets she saved, and the color photographs her father took of her adventures.Her writing style is clear and natural and she knows how to tell a good story.If she writes like this now, I can't wait to see what she will do in the future!

Excellent Reporting, Brilliant Book!
As an author, I meet many, many people who tell me, "Oh, I'd love to write a book!" But they never do it. They need to take lessons from Leah Lauber. She wrote a book chronicling her amazing journey following the extraordinary accomplishments of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team. Passionate about soccer, Leah attended many of the history-making soccer matches not just as a fan, but also as a reporter. She interviewed her role models: Mia Hamm, Lorrie Fair, Cindy Parlow, Briana Scurry, and many other team members. Leah incorporated these interviews and game coverage into articles she wrote for Florida's largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times.

These accomplishments are admirable. But there's more to this story ... Leah did all this when she was just 12 years old!!! By following her twin passions for writing and soccer, Leah first achieved her dreams of meeting and talking with her heroes, attending the Women's World Cup, and reporting for a major newspaper. Then she reached her dream of writing a book. And what a book! Colorful photos and vivid writing truly bring women's soccer to life.

As you read "Soccer Dreams," you'll get caught up in the excitement of the sport and the thrill of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team victories -- whether or not you're a fan. Leah's book makes you feel like you're right there in the middle of all the action. The book brims with added bonuses. Page 6 features reproductions of autographs Leah obtained from members of the national teams from both the U.S. and Norway. Section 3 is an absolute goldmine -- here's where you'll find Leah's unedited interviews with the national soccer team players.

Get this book for your daughters, it will inspire them to follow and reach their dreams. Get this book if you love soccer. Get it if you enjoy the thrill of a game, a good read, or a close look at sports history. I give this book 5 stars plus. An inspiring, motivating masterpiece!

-- Graciela Sholander (...)

A "must" reading for all young soccer enthusiasts
Twelve year old Leah Lauber was more than an enthusiastic soccer fan -- she also landed a job as a Junior Reporter for the St. Petersburg Times covering the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cub. Soccer Dreams is the unique story of how for one year, a young girl covered the story of how the team prepared for the event, and how they went on to win this prestigious soccer event. Written with the help and assistance of her family (Leah's yonger sister Nicole and her grandmother, Nanny Pat Lauber, transcribed hours of Leah's interviews and recorded comments during seven different sessions with almost every member of the women's team, and her mother, Rya, worked on the book's cover design and her fahter sorted through hundreds of photos and scanned them into the computer for use in illustrating the thoroughly engaging text), Soccer Dreams is "must" reading for all young soccer enthusiasts and would be a popular addition to any gradeschool, junior high, or community library Sports collection.

Not Just For Soccer Fans!
I began this book with some skepticism. I'm not at all a soccer fan and was afraid I'd find it boring -- or poorly written, given the author's young age. But Leah Lauber won me over by the second page! Her fresh voice, enthusiasm for the subject matter, and beyond-her-years writing skills make Soccer Dreams a pleasure to read. I was hooked by her chutzpah in dreaming big dreams and finding ways to make them come true. And I learned a lot about the sport and the women who play it. Lauber's book gave me a new respect for these outstanding athletes, not just for their prowess on the soccer field but for their character, loyalty, and sense of teamwork and camaraderie off it. Lauber's journey covers not only her trek across the country to follow the team through the realization of its dreams, but her own increasing skill and confidence as a writer. I expect we'll see more great things from this talented young author. ... Read more

Product Description
Prior to the 1870s, Association Football tended to be enjoyed as a form of exercise at public schools or a game between friends in a local park. However, with the administrative skills of the likes of Charles Alcock, Francis Marindin, Arthur Kinnaird and William McGregor, the game grew to such an extent that it became an important part in the lives of both players and spectators as the century reached its end.The history of the early clubs, international games, as well as the growth of the professional clubs, are all encompassed in this book, including the likes of Aston Villa, Manchester United and Liverpool, when they started out as struggling little clubs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wide of the goal
The history of sport in general, and football in particular, is surprisingly little studied in the UK. There has, of course, been quite an upsurge in the academic study of sports history in the last 10 or 15 years, but, even so, enthusiasts and serious students of the game alike can only look with envy at the wide range of materials - team histories, player biographies, academic texts - available to fans of, say, baseball's 'dead-ball' era. This book is, in fact, the first general study of the origins of English 'soccer' to be published since James Malvin's rather shorter (but much broader) 'The People's Game', which first appeared something like 30 years ago.

It's for this reason that Philip Gibbons' work is such a disappointment. It is, let it be admitted, the product of a tremendous amount of work; it reads easily enough; and it is also admirably comprehensive, so long as you are interested in the scorelines of matches that took place up to 130 years ago. Yet it so lacks both context and any sense of a developing story, or even of the excitement of individual games, that it is hard to imagine anyone reading it right through for pleasure.

The book might, in fact, more accurately be described as a chronicle than a history. It is divided into a total of 25 chapters, the early sections covering several years at a time and the latter ones - after the foundation of the Football League in the late 1880s, in particular - just a season each. Each chapter is then sub-divided into 10 or a dozen short sections, covering international games (England games only), FA Cup Finals, and other notable incidents of the season concerned. Once the League gets going, each First Division team gets a section of its own for every year, but - again - a side's progress through a given season is followed in rather a cursory manner. Gibbons gives endless lists of scores, but never contextualises, so we find out little more than the occasional scorer's name, and certainly nothing of the importance of the fixture or the main incidents of the game. Similarly, almost nothing is ever said about a team's manager, owners, star players, crowds, or its problems on or off the pitch; anecdote is all but absent, and important trends such as the professionalisation and unionisation of the game, changes in tactics or rules and so on are only covered spottily. All sense of excitement is, in short, sacrificed to an impotent 'completeness'.

It is, for example, hard to imagine even the keenest West Brom fan deriving much pleasure from an account of the team's 1897-8 season that reads (p.371)

'Albion opened the season with a 4-3 reverse at Aston Villa, with Higgins, McManus and McKenzie on target for the visitors, which preceded a 2-0 home success against Nottingham Forest with Ben Garfield netting a brace of goals. A 3-2 defeat at Derby County continued their indifferent start to the season, but a 2-0 home win against Stoke saw a return to winning ways...'

and goes on, in like manner, for a further page. It would surely have been better to have covered fewer games in more detail, and certainly to have made some reference to their actual importance in deciding championships or relegation battles.

It might, of course, be argued that Gibbons has done what he can with the material available. Early records certainly are lacking, and the chance to do what Lawrence Ritter did for baseball in the early 1960s by recording and editing the hugely entertaining player reminiscences that make up The Glory of Their Times was lost decades ago. There are newspaper reports, of course, but I am sufficiently a veteran of the close-printed, barely-headlined pages of the Victorian newspapers archived at Colindale to know what a large and thankless task it would be to scan even a representative sample of the material available for so long a period as that covered by this book - 1863 to 1900.

And yet, it can be done. Gibbons seems not to have read, and certainly does not use, the handful of biographies that do exist for this period. John Harding's excellent study of Billy Meredith, Peter Seddon's recent work on Derby Country great Steve Bloomer, and even Phil Vasili's eccentrically-organised yet deeply-researched book 'The First Black Footballer' (on Arthur Wharton, who kept goal for Preston and Rotherham in the early 1880s) contain more sense of history than this book. And, for all its narrow focus, Peter Stead's 'For Club and Country: Welsh Football Greats' makes readers experience something of the rich personalities of early players such as Meredith and the immortal Leigh Richmond Roose in a way that Gibbons simply cannot.

'Association Football in Victorian England' is, then, only a stepping-stone to a book that still needs to be written - one that places the scorelines that form the central plank of Gibbons's work in their proper context, and explains how and why football developed as it did. There would be room in such an ideal work for personality, incident and humour too. But, yes, it would be a brave and industrious man who actually sat down and wrote it.

So many questions remain. What made the Preston North End team of 1888 invincible? How on earth did Bloomer - an inside right - score so many goals? To what extent was Jack Robinson, of Derby, New Brighton and Southampton, the first truly modern goalkeeper? How did the dribbling game of the 1870s come to be superseded by the 'combination' (passing) game of later years, and what did early fans think of the change? What, exactly were the apparently endless 'prior commitments' that kept the famous Meridiem Brothers, AM and PM Walters, out of the England defence on so many occasions in the mid-1880s? And did the legendary G.O. Smith - who, despite being a short, weedy asthmatic, ranks as the game's first great centre forward - really refuse, as a matter of principle and breeding, ever to head the ball? Sadly, you won't find the answers here. ... Read more

Product Description
The European Cup: An Illustrated History offers a full chronological account of each year's competition, covering all the most exciting games, the fortunes of the British teams, and the finals themselves. It profiles the major clubs, players and managers, provides comprehensive results and statistics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Good source, but needs an editor
This book fills a void, as very little information is available on this subject, at least in the United States. MacWilliam goes through the tournament year by year, with a review of each Final.(He also gives special focus to the British teams, which I enjoyed, but some readers may not.) This work is decorated with pictures from the history of the competition, as well as profiles of individuals, from legends such as Alfredo di Stefano to lesser known players, like Jimmy Case.However, errors dot this work (the 1967 final was not at the Stadium of Light, Vladikavkaz is not in Chechnya), preventing it from receiving a five star rating. Still, it is a worthwhile source on a worthy topic. ... Read more

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The place of football in the colonial and post-colonial past is explored and both British and Portuguese influences on the development of the game are considered. Contemporary issues such as the impact of the professional league in India and the role of UK Asians in the organization of the Indian game are considered. Future scenarios are explored and models for progression and problems facing the sport in south Asia are outlined. ... Read more

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Cantor brings to the history of the World Cup the same enthusiasm, knowledge, and idiosyncratic touches that have made his broadcasts on Univision a favorite of both Latino and mainstream audiences. Filled with personal anecdotes and observations about the game and the business of soccer, "Goooal!" will appeal to the many fans of America's thriving new professional soccer leagues. of photos.Amazon.com Review
Andres Cantor is one of the sporting world's true characters:he is the stentorian voice of soccer on the Univision network. Thebook's title comes from the multisyllabic wail Cantor lets out when agoal is scored and he's at the microphone. His book's contents are farless loud, but are every bit as colorful and interesting: a detailedhistory of World Cup soccer and the jingoism that often attends it allrun through Cantor's outsized personality. Cantor knows his stuff andrelays it entertainingly with keen analyses of the evolution ofon-the-field play and punchy interviews with such high-kickers asBrazil's Pele, England's Bobby Charlton, Holland's Johann Cruyff, andArgentina's Diego Maradona. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Passionate! Like he is when he announces! Update Please!!
This is a fine book which details every World Cup since it began in 1930. Let's be honest, Andres Cantor is from Argentina and often his view is preoccupied with the "Albiceleste" (in reference to the blue and white stripes of Argentina's jerseys); but that really is part of what makes this book good. You can not be from the football/soccer world and be unbiased; save if you are from the United States where the fever has not taken hold to the extent it has in other countries. I would opine too, Andres is a bit in favor of the Italians as well. Having watched his telecasts for Univision; the book is a bit like those telecasts, he expresses a lot of excitement for example over the 1990 Golden Boot (most goals in the World Cup) winner Salvatore "Toto" Schillaci. Cantor gets so excited it is something one can not forget. Reading the book 14 years after that World Cup just refreshes the memory.

Cantor may go overboard on his coverage of Argentina but it would be difficult to call him unobjective in his portrayals of the Cup. He calls Maradona's hand of God goal, that what it was, a handball that should not have counted as a soccer/football goal and likewise, tells us that Hurst's goal against Germany was did not actually cross the line in full according to science at Oxford University in England. Of course, this latter incident has been up to scientific scrutiny before and since so I don't think the final verdict is in.

Possibly in slight gradations, Cantor is not always kind to some countries, be it England or Brazil; but overall, he hits the mark. He is obviously better informed on the subject than almost anyone.

This rather detailed reference of the World Cup ends with the 1994 World Cup held in America. It's a decent book, I wish there had been some sort of final chapter with Cantor's reflections on the game. It should be updated.

The one thing, is Cantor certainly is associated with the vociferous excitable call of "Goooal!" but at times, I wonder if he almost takes too much credit for it. Of course, he does mention that he learned it from others. Still, the long accentuated exclamation can be found up and down Latin America and was in fact, done quite well by Cantor's predecessor at Univision Tony Tirado. I don't even remember seeing him even mentioned in the book. Yet, given the subject matter which is just about endless, Cantor scores with a fine book.

Alternative view of World Cup History, well-worth a read.
Soccer (football to the rest of the world) is ideally played at its highest level by players representing their home nations in the FIFA World Cup Finals tournament held every four years, a sporting event rivalled on a worldwide level only by the Olympic Games.From the tournament's beginning in 1930, the winning nations have hailed exclusively from the continents of Europe (three times champions include Germany and Italy, as well as single time winners England and France) and South America (five-times champions Brazil, and two-times winners Uruguay and Argentina).

As the game was created in England and therefore has the longest-established leagues and sports journalism histories there, most of the best periodical publications and books written regarding the game also originate in Britain.Probably the best book written from British shores regarding the World Cup history is Brian Glanville's "The Story of the World Cup" (ASIN: 0571190812).As would be expected, the book does have a rather biased leaning toward the European view of the game, and Glanville's writing, while rather accomplished for a sports scribe, can at times be somewhat condescending in tone regarding the aspects of the game that aren't common to European sports cultures (and particularly regarding the Argentina-England soccer/football rivalry began in 1966).

"GOOOAL!" seems remarkably fresh in comparison.It is written by a South American native (Argentinian, specifically) who is indeed a sports journalist of a sort; Andres Cantor is a sportscaster who can best be described to sports fans from North America who aren't familiar with his work or style as John Madden, Don Cherry, and Howard Cosell all rolled up into to one impossibly gregarious and larger-than-life personality.It is obvious from listening to his broadcasts (even if you don't speak a word of the Spanish language...which I don't) that Cantor is first and foremost a fan of the game around which he bases his trade.Whereas Glanville's writing seems rather detached and coldly impersonal and at times even sardonic (much like the German nacionalmannschaft at its highest levels from 1966 through 1996), Cantor brings the emotional element that South American players AND supporters are known overseas for displaying during games...and yes, it is rather biased toward South American countries.However, Cantor's strength as a writer lies in his optomistic approach; he may take a more positive approach to the game played by the nations from his home continent, but he doesn't take a negative approach toward anyone.He probably worships at the shrine of Diego Armando Maradona more than he should, but even the Europeans concede that despite the more controversial elements of his career on and off the playing field, Maradona is still one of the two best players ever to lace up a pair of cleats.

Another nice element to this book is the interviews conducted by the author at the end of each tournament summary with a particular star from that tournament.Interestingly enough, there were no interviews with members of any of the three German teams that won World Cups in 1954, 1974, or 1990, although there were certainly no lack of stars from which to choose from those teams.The players comment on the state of the game, what direction they see the game heading, and the contrast within the game from their own playing time to the present.And of course they speak of their own contributions, as well.

The appendix section is rather more complete than Glanville's book, with goalscoring credit given for every goal scored in the tournament finals from 1930 through 1994.It would have been nice to have listed the rosters of all teams that competed within the tournaments as well, but that is a small enough complaint.

For uninitiated sports fans interested in the World Cup history of soccer from 1930 through 1994, this book along with Glanville's "The Story of the World Cup" provide a fine overview, neither being weighed down in fine-toothed combed detail; both are absolute necessities.They make up two sides of the same coin and should not be read without the other.

Excellent Research About the "Beautiful Game."
I had the pleasure to meet Mr. Cantor during hisbook signing in Washington, DC. He was very affable,and we had a pleasant discussion about our common passion of world football.

Within the international soccer broadcasting world, Mr. Cantor is without an equal. I have heard hundreds of his broadcasts, and was always impressed by his encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. He seemed to take great pains to learn how to pronounce the names of every player, and to provide his audience with an entertaining narration. His attention to detail and research skills are aptly demonstrated in thisbook. If you were a Martian who landed on Earth, you would read this book to learn about our most popular sport. :-)

This book is a comprehensive discussion about the evolution of soccer, and how politics often hastened its development. Mr. Cantor provides us with a history of the World Cup, along with detailed accounts of specific games. He also presents the reader with several intriguing interviews with world-class coachesand players. For me, these discussions were the most enlightening feature of the book. This book will entertain the serious enthusiast, yet also educate new fans about the sport.

The archive of photographs is compelling. We see the fascist salutes of Mussolini's Azzurri (1934), the precocious 17 year old Pele scoring a goal in Sweden (1958), along with the tears of Diego Maradona after Argentina's loss to Germany (1990.) Whether you call this sport football, soccer, futbol, or calcio, this book will inform, educate, and entertain. As Pele of Brazil would say, this is about "The Beautiful Game."

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book.

An excellent historical overview of all World Cups.
Writing about the World Cups is similar to writing about politics: it is difficult for the author to write objectively.But as in love, politics, war and soccer, opinions turn out to be the heart of the matter.Cantorand Arcucci have done an excellent job of recounting the World Cups yet atthe same time letting their Argentine passion for the sport express itselfon the pages.This is a book all soccer officionado should read. All thechapters have a great interview with a great figure from each World Cup. For all of you who think that you know everthing about the Cups, this bookwill open your horizons to a South American point of view.For those whodon't know enough, this book will infuse you with the passion for thegreatest sporting championship of all time.

Okay book.Barely.(Yawn.)
From the first page of this book I couldn't get over the idea that this whole exercise was some marketing guy's idea."Hey, Cantor's famous.He could put drivel on a page and diehard soccer fans will buy it. Shouldn't be too hard to make a profit on this one.And just to be safe,we'll have it ghosted.That way all he really has to do is pose for thecover." Cantor's an entertaining guy, but his history of the WorldCup is only marginally interesting. It's stiff, and difficult to hang withfor more than about ten pages at a time. All in all it's prettymediocre stuff.If you're looking for a book that captures theentertaining goofiness of Cantor's personna, this, regrettably, isn't it. Maybe next time.I hope so. ... Read more

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Soccer and Society surveys soccer's early history in south Wales. Through an exploration of the entire spectrum of the game, from international matches and professional clubs to schoolboy games, this fascinating book illustrates how soccer was shaped by wider social, cultural, and economic forces. Drawing on a broad range of primary sources, it places football in its wider historical context, showing how soccer was incorporated into a redefined national identity that emerged from the depression and political realignment in inter-war south Wales, and demonstrating the significance of the sport for 20th-century Welsh history and culture. ... Read more

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A Social History of Indian Football covers the period 1850-2004. It considers soccer as a derivative sport, creatively and imaginatively adapted to suit modern Indian socio-cultural needs - designed to fulfil political imperatives and satisfy economic aspirations. The book is concerned with the appropriation, assimilation and subversion of sporting ideals in colonial and post-colonial India for nationalist needs.

The book assesses the role of soccer in colonial Indian life, to delineate the inter-relationship between those who patronised, promoted, played and viewed the game, to analyse the impact of the colonial context on the games evolution and development and shed light on the diverse nature of trysts with the sport across the country. Throughout this book, soccer is the lens that illuminates India's colonial and post-colonial encounter.

This volume was previously published as a special issue of the journal Soccer and Society. ... Read more

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In the informative, entertaining, and generously illustrated Spartak Moscow, a book that will be cheered by soccer fans worldwide, Robert Edelman finds in the stands and on the pitch keys to understanding everyday life under Stalin, Khrushchev, and their successors. Millions attended matches and obsessed about their favorite club, and their rowdiness on game day stood out as a moment of relative freedom in a society that championed conformity. This was particularly the case for the supporters of Spartak, which emerged from the rough proletarian Presnia district of Moscow and spent much of its history in fierce rivalry with Dinamo, the team of the secret police. To cheer for Spartak, Edelman shows, was a small and safe way of saying "no" to the fears and absurdities of high Stalinism; to understand Spartak is to understand how soccer explains Soviet life.

Champions of the Soviet Elite League twelve times and eleven-time winner of the USSR Cup, Spartak was founded and led for seven decades by the four Starostin brothers, the most visible of whom were Nikolai and Andrei. Brilliant players turned skilled entrepreneurs, they were flexible enough to constantly change their business model to accommodate the dramatic shifts in Soviet policy. Whether because of their own financial wheeling and dealing or Spartak's too frequent success against state-sponsored teams, they were arrested in 1942 and spent twelve years in the gulag. Instead of facing hard labor and likely death, they were spared the harshness of their places of exile when they were asked by local camp commandants to coach the prisoners' football teams. Returning from the camps after Stalin's death, they took back the reins of a club whose mystique as the "people's team" was only enhanced by its status as a victim of Stalinist tyranny.

Edelman covers the team from its days on the wild fields of prerevolutionary Russia through the post-Soviet period. Given its history, it was hardly surprising that Spartak adjusted quickly to the new, capitalist world of postsocialist Russia, going on to win the championship of the Russian Premier League nine times, the Russian Cup three times, and the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States Cup six times.

In addition to providing a fresh and authoritative history of Soviet society as seen through its obsession with the world's most popular sport, Edelman, a well-known sports commentator, also provides biographies of Spartak's leading players over the course of a century and riveting play-by-play accounts of Spartak's most important matches-including such highlights as the day in 1989 when Spartak last won the Soviet Elite League on a Valery Shmarov free kick at the ninety-second minute. Throughout, he palpably evokes what it was like to cheer for the "Red and White." ... Read more

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The passion and the glory of the beautiful game, captured on the eve of the World Cup. From the origins of soccer to the World Cup played in the US in 1994, one of Latin America's most fluent and widely read commentators captures the enduring appeal of the world's greatest game. Eduardo Galeano seeks out the mystical and the bewitched, the romance and the emotional destitution experienced by players and fans the world round. Here is a story of love and death: of the suicide of Abdon Porte, who shot himself in the center circle of the National Stadium; of the Argentine manager who wouldn't let his team eat chicken because it would bring bad luck; of the Russian goalkeeper who prepared his min and soothed his nerves with a cigarette and a dash of vodka before each game. Published in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup, this is the glory of soccer in all its international hues, with its multilingual cries of despair, victory and passion. No one who has ever played in or cheered on a soccer side will want to miss this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

Extraordinary
Eduardo Galeano is a consumate writer. While ostensibly writing about soccer, he is actually revealing aspects of life. Good for the soccer fan and anyone who likes to read good writing.

Tiresome & Factually Challenged
This is the most tiresome book about soccer I have ever read.It is also the most factually inaccurate book about soccer I have ever read.There are lengthy passages that distort the facts so much that they can only be considered deliberate fabrications.The stories about Italy's victory in the 1938 World Cup are excellent examples.There are many more that contain just vague or inaccurate descriptions of the facts.There are numerous descriptions of goals that the author didn't see and that weren't recorded on video; why describe them?There is more to soccer than scoring goals, and these descriptions, although nicely done, are so numerous and interchangable that they become tiresome.When you throw all this in with the author's penchant for irrelevant political slogans and history, the book just isn't worth reading.If you want to read an entertaining and factual book about Latin American soccer try Alex Bellos's Futebol, which is fascinating, even if you aren't a soccer fan.

Soccer in Sun and Shadow
This is a wonderfully nostalgic group of vignettes and reflections. At times, the writing is quite poignant. This will resonate with long-time soccer (futbol) aficionados, who know the history of the game. Younger readers will be lost in some of the allusions and will not know some of the players.

Random Essays on Professional Soccer
Eduardo Galeano has collected a series of short essays developing random thoughts about professional soccer.He seems to decry the fact that professional soccer has become big entertainment business. I detected an inate longing for watching men play soccer just for the joy of participating in a boys game in several of Mr. Galeano's essays. However, he does develop some interesting imagry and metaphors to describe the game of soccer.

One of my all-time favorite books
I liked the my old paperback edition so much, I bought a hardbound version of the new edition.(The new material BTW is just a continuation of Galeano's commentaries this time centered on the 2002 World Cup tournament.Older version just went up to the 1998 tournament.)

Any discussion of Galeano's writing must begin with his inimitable style.For lack of a proper genre, I call his writings "mosaicos", as each little vignette is like an individual tile in a larger, greater picture.Sometimes this format can be a bit disjointed, but in "Soccer Sun Shadow", it works because the Reader understands that the vignettes are organized chronologically.Galeano does have some vignettes about the origins of the game and its spread to the far-flung corners of the world by British imperialists, but by and large the narrative begins with accounts of games/goals/players from the early 1950s.Since Galeano is Uruguayan, he also has a decidedly Latin American bias (so don't expect to be reading about European teams of the era).

I'm 42 years old and a fan of soccer; some of the stories/players mentioned I had never heard of, so it was refreshing to hear a bit of this history.Once Galeano's narrative caught up to my earliest memories of the game (1970/1974 World Cups), I felt like I was talking to an old friend about a subject we both love.I think that's why I like this book so much:it blends my love of literature (I'm an English teacher) with my love of soccer, and it does it so poetically, so precisely, with such quick turns of language, it is a distinct pleasure to read and reminisce.

I'm not saying you should buy two copies of "Soccer Sun Shadow" (like I did), but if you buy one, I'm sure you'll enjoy the read. ... Read more

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The rise and fall of the NASL
A book like this has been over due for years. It charts the rise and fall of the world game in the USA in the mid 70s to early 80s and lays the foundations for its recovery in 94 with the World Cup and the creation of the MSL in 96.

In 1975/77/79 I was lucky enough to visit the US from the UK for the first times to visit family. It was a thrill a minute adventure to what seemed to be a technicolour land, compared to the relative drab of the UK at the time. The NASL reflected that vividness. Bright shirts, "uniforms", exotically named teams (Tulsa Roughnecks, Tampa Bay Rowdies, Vancouver Whitecaps) and some world class players (Cruyff, Pele, Best). The NASL really was a carnival like experience and where the quality of play was far higher than many people assumed it would be.

Sadly it all ended too soon with too many clubs ("franchises" in reality, not clubs in the European sense) over stretching themselves by paying too high wages to what, in many cases, were moderate players in cities with no historical roots or love of the game. But the NASL sowed a seed that helped lead to millions of Americans, of both sexes, playing the sport, a league in the shape of the MSL where profitability and having a core of local US players is a key factor and a national side that, in the 2002 World Cup in Japan, really was a quality side and a surprise package with significant major future potential.

This book is very well written and David Tossell clearly did his homework with extensive interviews with a great many of the players and coaches of the NASL years, both the big names and the unknowns. The result is an excellent read for anyone interested in the NASL and the growth of the game in the US. ... Read more