A History of the World Cup

Author: Clemente A. Lisi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153810833X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Book Description
There is no sporting event more popular than the World Cup. For one month every four years, billions of people around the world turn their attention to the tournament. Fans call in sick to work, pack into bars to watch games, or stay home for days at a time glued to their TV sets. In A History of the World Cup: 1930-2018, Clemente A. Lisi chronicles this international phenomenon, providing vivid accounts of individual games from the tournament's origins in 1930 to modern times. In addition, the book features statistics for each competition, photos, and profiles of the most memorable—and controversial—figures of the sport, including Diego Maradona, Juste Fontaine, Franz Beckenbauer, Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Miroslave Klose, and Pelé. This new edition includes coverage of the FIFA corruption scandal, the use of video technology, a profile of 2018 Golden Ball winner Luka Modric, revised statistical information, and memorable moments from the 2018 tournament. Comprehensive yet highly readable, A History of the World Cup is a wonderful book for fans of the beautiful game.

The Official History of the Fifa World Cup(tm)

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781802790887
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The Official History of the FIFA World Cup Book is an authoritative and comprehensive review of the 20 FIFA World Cups to have taken place since the inaugural tournament in 1930. Packed with stunning photography, exclusive interviews of the biggest stars of each edition, unique official documents and statistics, it is a must read for any football fan around the world. No other event in the sporting world can rival the glamour, impact, fervent following and universal appeal of the FIFA World Cup. This unique book tells the stories behind the scenes, as well as analyzing the most famous incidents. It features the biggest stars and many previously unknown ones too, all with a unique worldwide point of view.

The World Cup as World History

Author: William D. Bowman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442267208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
The World Cup as World History uses football’s premier event to analyze modern sports and world history. William D. Bowman traces the history of a tournament that has become a global phenomenon that generates intense political, economic, and cultural interest and profound discussions about racial, ethnic, and gender identity in the contemporary era. By focusing on the World Cup, the book keeps a tight thematic focus that allows for an integrated discussion of the core issues of globalization, money and finance, sport as spectacle, race and gender, and contemporary politics.

What Is the World Cup?

Author: Bonnie Bader
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0515158224
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

Book Description
GOOOAAAAAL! Get ready for a front-row seat at the world's most-watched sporting event--the World Cup. Every four years, thirty-two of the best men's soccer teams from across the globe compete for the title of FIFA World Cup winner. Over one billion people tuned in worldwide to watch the final game of the 2014 competition, making the World Cup the most widely viewed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Summer Olympics! This book takes a look back at what has changed since the first tournament in 1930 and what lies ahead for the most popular sport in the world.

The FIFA World Cup

Author: Clemente A. Lisi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 153815644X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
The first complete history of the FIFA World Cup with a preview of the 2022 event in Qatar. Every four years, the world’s best national soccer teams compete for the FIFA World Cup. Billions of people tune in from around the world to experience the remarkable events unfolding live, both on and off the field. From Diego Maradona’s first goal against England at the 1986 World Cup to Nelson Mandela’s surprise appearance at the 2010 final in South Africa, these unforgettable World Cup moments have helped to create a global phenomenon. In The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event, veteran soccer reporter Clemente A. Lisi chronicles the tournament from 1930 to today, including a preview of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Lisi provides vivid accounts of individual games, details the innovations that impacted the sport across the decades, and offers biographical sketches of greats such as Pelé, Diego Maradona, and Lionel Messi. In addition, Lisi includes needed, objective coverage of off-field controversies such as the FIFA corruption case, making this book the only complete and impartial history of the tournament. Featuring personal interviews and behind-the-scenes stories from the author’s many years attending and covering the World Cup, as well as stunning color photography, The FIFA World Cup is the definitive history of this global event.

World in Motion

Author: Simon Hart
Publisher: deCoubertin Books
ISBN: 1909245658
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 532

Book Description
Italia ’90 was the best and worst of World Cups. It made a global star of England’s inspirational Paul Gascoigne and gave fresh confidence to English football but it was also the lowest- scoring of all World Cups, leading directly to the back-pass ban that transformed the sport. World In Motion travels from Africa to South America, via Europe and the Middle East, to hear from the protagonists of Italia ’90 and find out why it is still seen as a special and transformative moment, not just in English eyes but in other countries far and wide. It was a World Cup of firsts – from Cameroon’s quarter-final trail-blazers via the feats of newcomers like the Republic of Ireland and Costa Rica – but a tournament too which marked the last hurrah of the old footballing powers of the Eastern Bloc amid the collapse of the Iron Curtain. It began with the biggest shock of any opening game, as nine-man Cameroon beat Argentina, and it ended with the worst final of all, as West Germany beat nine-man Argentina with a much-disputed penalty. In between it gave us a big spectacle, a winning soundtrack and some unforgettable storylines. World In Motion speaks to players and coaches, referees and administrators, reporters and fans to gauge the full impact of football’s dramatic Italian summer – including meeting Roger Milla at his home in Cameroon and Totò Schillaci at his football school in Sicily. In the process it rediscovers a time when the game stood on the brink of change, with the Premier League and Champions League on the horizon, yet the World Cup remained a thrilling voyage of discovery – a land of novelties, from Fair Play flags to fan embassies to that first-ever penalty shoot-out heartbreak for England ...

The Ugly Game

Author: Heidi Blake
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471149366
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 578

Book Description
THE STORY THAT BROUGHT DOWN FIFA'S SEPP BLATTER. 'With every page of this book, we see just why FIFA desperately needs a complete overhaul' - Sun When FIFA awarded the tiny desert state of Qatar the rights to host the 2022 World Cup, the news was greeted with disbelief and allegations of corruption. How had a country with almost no football infrastructure or tradition, a high terror risk and searing summer temperatures of 50C beaten more established countries with stronger bids? The story behind the Qatari success soon developed into one of the greatest sporting scandals of our time. And when the Sunday Times Insight team received a cache of hundreds of millions of documents from a whistleblower, the contents of the FIFA Files became a global sensation, unearthing the corruption that lay at the heart of the bidding process. Now in this remarkable new book by the Sunday Times journalists at the centre of the investigation, Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert, comes the most comprehensive account yet of what happened and who was involved. Above all, it explains why, despite all the evidence, FIFA continues to support Qatar - even to the extent of publishing an edited and abbreviated report into the process that was immediately denounced by its original author. Longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, The Ugly Game is undoubtedly the biggest sporting story of our times. 'Never before has bribe-giving been documented in such graphic detail' - Independent

Soccernomics

Author: Simon Kuper
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568588860
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn't America dominate the sport internationally...and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style? These are questions every soccer aficionado has asked. Soccernomics answers them. Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, Soccernomics reveals the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about soccer. An essential guide for the 2010 World Cup, Soccernomics is a new way of looking at the world's most popular game.

Red Card

Author: Ken Bensinger
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1501133918
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
The definitive, shocking account of the FIFA scandal—the biggest corruption case of recent years—involving dozens of countries and implicating nearly every aspect of the world’s most popular sport, soccer, including the World Cup is “an engrossing and jaw-dropping tale of international intrigue…A riveting book” (The New York Times). The FIFA case began small, boosted by an IRS agent’s review of an American soccer official’s tax returns. But that humble investigation eventually led to a huge worldwide corruption scandal that crossed continents and reached the highest levels of the soccer’s world governing body in Switzerland. “The meeting of American investigative reporting and real-life cop show” (The Financial Times), Ken Bensinger’s Red Card explores the case, and the personalities behind it, in vivid detail. There’s Chuck Blazer, a high-living soccer dad who ascended to the highest ranks of the sport while creaming millions from its coffers; Jack Warner, a Trinidadian soccer official whose lust for power was matched only by his boundless greed; and the sport’s most powerful man, FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who held on to his position at any cost even as soccer rotted from the inside out. Remarkably, this corruption existed for decades before American law enforcement officials began to secretly dig, finally revealing that nearly every aspect of the planet’s favorite sport was corrupted by bribes, kickbacks, fraud, and money laundering. Not even the World Cup, the most-watched sporting event in history, was safe from the thick web of corruption, as powerful FIFA officials extracted their bribes at every turn. “A gripping white-collar crime thriller that, in its scope and human drama, ranks with some of the best investigative business books of the past thirty years” (The Wall Street Journal), Red Card goes beyond the headlines to bring the real story to light.

Touched by God

Author: Diego Armando Maradona
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101993405
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
The story of the most remarkable—and controversial—World Cup triumph in history, told in a long-awaited firsthand account from Diego Maradona, its most legendary player. “This is Diego Armando Maradona speaking, the man who scored two goals against England and one of the few Argentines who knows how much the World Cup actually weighs” In June 1986, Diego Maradona—one of soccer’s greatest and most polarizing figures—proudly hoisted the World Cup above his head. Since then, Argentina’s World Cup victory has become the stuff of legend, particularly their infamous victory over England—only four years after the country’s defeat in the Falklands War—which featured arguably the best goal in history (Maradona’s “Goal of the Century”) and the worst (the notorious “Hand of God”). But Argentina’s victory came after months of struggle and discord within the team, including the Argentine government’s attempt to remove the team’s management, a lack of equipment that forced the players to buy their own uniforms, and an argument that caused the team’s captain to quit on the eve of the tournament. Now, thirty years after Argentina’s magical victory, Maradona tells his side of the story, vividly recounting how he led the team to win one of the greatest World Cup triumphs of all time.