Flick, fake, and dribble your way to soccer masteryPrepare for the World Cup or learn the rules for your own indoor or outdoor league, with Soccer For Dummies. We cover the world’s most popular sport from one end of the field to the other, starting with the history of soccer and the basics of the game. Discover the positions on the field, the best tactics for winning, and the skills the players (including you!) need in order to dominate. This update to the...

Understand the sport of soccer and encourage your kids to have funYouth Soccer For Parents For Dummies explains how you can prepare your children to play and enjoy the sport of soccer, whether they play recreationally or at the elite youth level. Get up to speed on the basic rules, and learn to keep kids interested and motivated in a sport that's great for their physical and mental health. This ultimate parents' guide covers the rules, player positions, an...

Curious about the game of cricket? Start here!Cricket For Dummies, Third Edition will help you understand the basics of cricket, the internationally popular sport that has leagues around the globe. With this guide, you can enjoy watching matches, and even set up a casual game with friends. The book includes clear explanations of the rules, step-by-step guides to strategy and tactics, and info on all the most popular tournaments around the globe. Learn abou...

Every four years, the FIFA World Cup captures the global imagination like no other sporting spectacle. With a cumulative television audience of several billion people tuning in to the 2014 World Cup, and an estimated 700 million watching the finals—including more than 25 million in the United States alone—the World Cup is the world’s most-watched sporting event.The Encyclopedia of the FIFA World Cup provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available on the history...

Soccer is the world's most popular sport and one of the globe's best known cultural practices. The pinnacle of the sport worldwide is the FIFA World Cup, a competition held every four years, which crowns one nation as the world champion in front of huge global television audiences: over half of the planet's population watched the 2010 FIFA World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. From the humble origins of modern soccer in Great Britain in the 19th century, world soccer has becom...

Curious about the game of cricket? Start here!Cricket For Dummies, Third Edition will help you understand the basics of cricket, the internationally popular sport that has leagues around the globe. With this guide, you can enjoy watching matches, and even set up a casual game with friends. The book includes clear explanations of the rules, step-by-step guides to strategy and tactics, and info on all the most popular tournaments around the globe. Learn abou...

Barcelona are the greatest football team in the world, the greatest for a generation and possibly the greatest of all time.This is the untold inside story of how the best and most loved football team in the world came to redefine how the game is played.We start with the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley, the game that ended the debate about whether Barcelona were the greatest team in the world and began a new one: are they the best ever?We are inside the winning dressing room and insi...

Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the most exciting footballers of his generation. Starring at youth level on his home island of Maderia, his spirit and natural flair took him into the Sporting Lisbon first team, attracting the interest of Manchester United, who bought him in the summer of 2003. His dazzling footwork, showmanship and eye for goal not only inspired United to two Premiership titles, but he was United's only player to score in normal time in the 2008 Champions League final, which t...

This is a stimulating and deeply insightful football narrative by Rafa Benitez which focuses on the legendary manager's dramatic six Champions League campaigns with Liverpool. Rafa expertly navigates fans through intriguing European adventures that embrace the triumph and despair of two Champions League finals, three semi-finals and five quarter-finals in what was a golden era for the Anfield club - an era that supporters felt gave them their pride back after years in the wilderness. What ...

THE DEFINITIVE, CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BOOK ABOUT FOOTBALL'Football conquered the world with its capacity to astonish, and this is its definitive history' The IndependentThere may be no cultural practice more global than soccer. Rites of birth and marriage are infinitely diverse, but the rules of soccer are universal. No world religion can match its geographical scope. The single greatest simultaneous human collective experience is t...

Soccer is much more than just the most popular game in the world. It is a matter of life and death for millions around the world, an international lingua franca. Simon Kuper traveled to twenty-two countries to discover the sometimes bizarre effect soccer can have on politics and culture. At the same time he tried to discover what makes different countries play a simple game so differently. Kuper meets a remarkable variety of fans along the way, from the East Berliner persecuted by the Stas...

Simon Kuper's New York Times bestseller Soccernomics pioneered a new way of looking at soccer through meticulous empirical analysis and incisive -- and witty -- commentary. Kuper now leaves the numbers and data behind to explore the heart and soul of the world's most popular sport in the new, extraordinarily revealing Soccer Men.Soccer Men goes behind the scenes with soccer's greatest players and coaches. Inquiring into the genius and hubris of t...