Long-Range Goals The Success Story of Major League Soccer available May 2010 (can pre-order now) 978-1-59797-509-4 by Beau Dure (staff writer for USA Today and soccer blogger) All over the world, soccer is known as “the Beautiful Game” and is the most popular sport. But in the United States, professional soccer still has a hard time catching on. It has had some successes here. The American Soccer League of the 1920s, Pélé and other international stars in the North American Soccer League’s glamorous 1970s, the indoor soccer phenomenon of the 1980s, and the U.S. women’s win in the Women’s World Cup of 1999 all hinted that the American public is ready to embrace pro soccer. In its short history, Major League Soccer (MLS) has survived and even started to thrive, drawing steady crowds and loyal fans. In Long-Range Goals, Beau Dure profiles teams and players, including D.C. United, the Los Angeles Galaxy, Landon Donovan, Freddy Adu, and Coach Bruce Arena, who are all vital to MLS. Some of the triumphs include an expansion of the league and its ownership group, the contribution of MLS players to a strong U.S. World Cup showing in 2002, and the construction of soccer stadiums nationwide. At the same time, MLS has occasionally stumbled, during costly legal battles with players and seeing two teams fold, but its investors have remained strong, figured out how to make money, and support the league. From the league’s formation in 1993 to the David Beckham era, this book reveals all the action on and off the pitch: the politics, the lawsuits, the management of its teams, and the savvy business deals that helped MLS rebound. It also revels in the big personalities of its stars, the grace of its utility players, and the obstacles the league faces in meeting its long-range goals.
Looks great... May is so far away though! I've been more interested in reading American soccer books lately so I'll definitely be checking this out.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Round-Global-History-Soccer/dp/1594482969/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262299447&sr=1-1"]Amazon.com: The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer (9781594482960): David Goldblatt: Books[/ame] The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer, by David Goldblatt Just finished this a week or so ago. Coming in at about 950 pages, initially I read about 200 pages or so, put it down for 3 or 4 months, then read through to the end. I highly recommend it. Thorough, exhaustive, compelling, Goldblatt weaves "a global history of soccer" literally with the globe's history, combining politics, economics, sociology, etc. along with soccer history. Initially exploring the roots in England, etc., it moves to Europe, then Latin America, and onto Asia, Africa, North America, everywhere a ball has been kicked. I was just sorry when I finally came to the end.
exactly, I don't really think it's about the sport but more about being a sport fan. He just happens to be an Arsenal fan.
I highly recommend A Home on the Field by Paul Cuadros. I've seen it described as Hoosiers w/ Latino high school soccer players. That description is a bit simplistic but it does chronicle a high school soccer team made up of primarily Latino players in a small North Carolina town.
Anybody read anything (in English) on Greek soccer? National team or club will do. Also looking for more stuff involving Eastern European teams (country or league) that are not the following: Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football Spartak Moscow: A History of the People's Team in the Workers' State Football Dynamo: Modern Russia and the People's Game Passovotchka: Moscow Dynamo in Britain 1945 Dynamo: Defending the Honour of Kiev Comrade Jim: The Spy Who Played for Spartak
Anyone recommend any reading on the development of youth players in international systems. I am interested in learning more about how youth players are developed in Europe and other places in the world such as how academies over there work. Any recommendations?
So I just bought: Soccernomics Brilliant Orange Inverting the Pyramid Long Rang Goals Beckham Experiment I have some questions: 1. Which should I start reading first? 2. What is a good book on German football? 3. What is a good book on Italian football?
I'm about to start that myself after recommendations from my father and brother. Also, I haven't read Inverting the Pyramid, but I've read one of Jonathan Wilson's other books, Behind the Curtain: Football in Eastern Europe and it was fantastic.
Good luck finding it (I got it from inter-library loan, and the librarian pulled some strings to get it from a Canadian university library whose name I forget) Tor: The Story of German Football by Ulrich Lesse-Lichtenberger Here's the Amazon.co.uk listing [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tor-German-Football-Ulrich-Hesse-Lichtenberger/dp/095401345X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282074186&sr=1-1"]Tor!: The Story of German Football: Amazon.co.uk: Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger: Books[/ame] You didn't ask, but if you want the best book about MLS, it's the last one on your list Inverting the Pyrimid is damn good. About the only thing I got tired of was the author repeatedly calling out the English FA for discouraging tactically innovative football. It's a good point, but if I wanted that, I could log onto bigsoccer.com
do you have some purpose beyond enjoyment and general edification for reading these? if so let that guide the order you read them in. i personally think brilliant orange is one of the two best soccer books ever so i would read it last.
Mainly for enjoyment and curiosity. I just want to learn a little more about Dutch football. From the outside looking in it looks like, (IMO) with the Mexican influence that is about to hit the US. I think we could learn from FC Barcelona AKA Spain's National Team. That we could bring lots of Dutch and Spanish youth coaches and teach our kids to play modern day "Total Football" or "Tik Tak" whatever you call it in today's world because obviously it's not the same.
Based on the three on your list that I've read, I'd read Beckham Experiment first, then Brilliant Orange (just finished it yesterday), and round out with Soccernomics. All 3 are fantastic.
I agree. Inverting the Pyramid offers a lot of great stories about great football personalities, mainly managers, and I like the many graphical lineups from important games, but I also spotted some annoying errors. On the graphical lineup from the world cup 1986 final between Argentina and West Germany, he got the German team wrong. He put Brehme at left wing back, when in fact it was Briegel, who played that position. I just watched the match again recently, and Brehme is playing some sort of right full back. And he put Matthäus on the midfield, when he in fact played the first 2/3 of the match marking Maradona, who were playing in front. In the end of the book, he writes that a modern forward can be succesful without scoring goals. He then uses the Danish team of 1992 as an example, where he claims that Kim Vilfort and Flemming Povlsen were the 2 centre forwards of Denmark, and only Vilfort scored a goal in the competition, though they were both quite succesful. But Vilfort never was a centre forward at Euro 92. He might have been in his younger days, but at that turnament he was a hardworking box to box midfielder. Ironically enough that would have made Wilson's point even stronger, except for the fact that Lars Elstrup, who was an old school centre forward, scored against France. It might be small errors, but in my eyes it harms the credibility of the book.
If you're looking for a book on Italian soccer I don't know a good all encompessing history. However, Winning at Any Cost (I think that's the name) was a good look at the scandles of late in Italy. And for any soccer reader, you have to read "The Miracle of Castil Di Sangro" which is probably the best soccer book ever written... it reads like a novel about a small club that made it to Sierra B. Unbelieveable stuff about a great season there full of tragedy and hope and some cheating (it is about Italian football afterall). I've read WAY too many soccer books the last few years so I could give you a review of about anything.
Okay, I wanted to promote some lesser known books sort of about soccer so... Book about being a fan Think "Fever Pitch" with Stoke City... or as the author says "If Nick Hornby wanted real pain he'd be a Stoke Supporter." It's a great look at Stoke right before everything went right and they found their way to the Prem. League. There's a follow up about that first year in the Prem and although I haven't read it the author told me personally it was a better book! Flick To Kick (about Subbuteo, table soccer) A book about a cultural phenominom around the world (but not here of course). Ripple Effect A novel about some guys trying to save their lower tier team in England.
+1 here. I thought it was fantastic. The first and last definitely sound interesting to me; thanks for posting both!
Oh, there's also a book called "Sexy Football" which is a novel but reads like a big football fan's life story. It's good but you won't learn anything about football from it. I read it on the beach in Florida and that was about the perfect place to read such a book. You follow Ralph from a young Chelsea fan who becomes torn between his love for football and his love for women, to young adulthood when he realizes that the old English mentality isn't for him, to adulthood when he gets his heart truely broken by coaching youth football.
Distant Corners by David Wangerin. Brilliant history of, as the subtitle says, "Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes" in American soccer. The book could be longer, but Wengerin focuses on American football's success stemming from its catching on with the colleges, which is something soccer didn't do (great chapter on Penn State as a case study of an extremely successful team with almost no following on campus) and the failures of professional and semi-professional soccer (great chapter on St. Louis, which had it's own small pro league in addition to the 100+ team "Muny League." Basically, if everyone on bigsoccer read this book, the number of stupid threads in the "Soccer in the USA" forum would go down to zero. Any American fan should read this.
This one fills in gaps and goes into greater detail on lost chances and botched opportunities by focusing on specific examples: early touring teams from England in the late 19th-early 20th century, a bit on the first "challenge cups" (USOC), and quite a bit on the gritty urban game in St. Louis, where games were played with 2 refs, 2 linesmen, 2 goal judges, 35 minute halves, and substitutions. Or the early "college championships" before the NCAA recognized the game with an officially sanctioned tournament in 1959. Oh, and a great chapter on the NPSL's Oakland Clippers. In short, the theme of soccer organizations shooting themselves in the foot (or in the head) is still there, as in Soccer in a Football World, but he has a lot of great stories about the teams and the leagues that tried like hell to make it go (some of the St. Louis Muny championships would be played in front of 7-8 thousand people... and the St. Louis pro league teams would draw that many paying for Challenge Cup matches, things like that.