The Most Incredible True Football Stories - The England Edition PDF Download

Author: Matt Oldfield
Publisher: Wren & Rook
ISBN: 1526363534
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
CELEBRATE THE WOMEN'S WORLD CUP WITH THESE UNBELIEVABLE AND COMPLETELY TRUE ENGLAND FOOTBALL STORIES Think you know everything about the Three Lions and the Lionesses? Have you heard of . . . - The naughty pitch-invading dog that stole the show at the 1962 World Cup? - The English amateurs who achieved Olympic Gold? - The spy who snuck into training? - The Lost Lionesses who made it big in Mexico? - The infamous World Cup handball that sealed England's fate? The beautiful game has always reigned supreme in England. These incredible and sometimes ridiculous stories may give you some idea of why. From penalty pain to unbelievable comebacks, discover some of the best true tales of our beloved national teams. Compiled by bestselling author Matt Oldfield, this is the third book in the award-winning Unbelievable Football series and the perfect gift for young football fans everywhere. Now includes the story of when the Lionesses came roaring back at Euro 2022.

Author: Matt Oldfield
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1526362430
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The perfect read for the football-mad kid in your life *WINNER of the Telegraph Children's Sports Book of the Year, 2020* Do you think you know everything there is to know about football? Have you heard of ... * The psychic octopus who could predict the winner? * The Lancashire Lasses who became football's best kept secret? * The dog detective who saved the World Cup trophy? * The superstar footballer who never actually played football? Discover the most incredible, sometimes ridiculous, and always completely unbelievable football stories you never knew. From bestselling author Matt Oldfield, this is Unbelievable Football - true tales from the world's favourite game where there's everything to play for and anything can happen.

Author: Matt Oldfield
Publisher: Wren & Rook
ISBN: 1526367025
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The referee is looking at his watch - he's indicating FIVE minutes of extra time... Just enough for a five-minute true story from this epic collection of football tales, from bestselling author, Matt Oldfield. The next unbeatable book for football-mad kids and reluctant readers in the award-winning series, Unbelievable Football. Have you heard of... *The sneaky footballer who turned to a life of art crime? *The two Hollywood stars who swooped in to save Wrexham, the oldest club in Wales? *The Spanish Women's World Cup-winning team who fought for equality - and won! *The time Brighton lost 18-0 with a team of randoms plucked from the crowd? *The reason footballing legend, Maradona, wore not one, but two watches? Whizz through these fantastic five-minute true football stories. From unlikely football heroes and incredible comebacks to the worst red cards and dirtiest football tricks, this is a selection of hilarious, entertaining, inspiring and always unbelievable true football tales. Each story is the perfect length for reading at bedtime or in the car. Mega football fans can even read the entire book in 90 minutes - the same time it would take to watch a football match! Either way, the stage is set for a top-of-the-table classic football story collection.

Author: Joshua Robinson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN: 1328506452
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
Two veteran sports writers and editors take readers inside the history of the most-watched sports league on earth -- England's Premier League.

Author: Nick Hornby
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141926546
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
*WINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR* Fever Pitch is Nick Hornby's million-copy-selling, award-winnning football classic 'A spanking 7-0 away win of a football book. . . inventive, honest, funny, heroic, charming' Independent For many people watching football is mere entertainment, to some it's more like a ritual; but to others, its highs and lows provide a narrative to life itself. But, for Nick Hornby, his devotion to the game has provided one of few constants in a life where the meaningful things - like growing up, leaving home and forming relationships, both parental and romantic - have rarely been as simple or as uncomplicated as his love for Arsenal. Brimming with wit and honesty, Fever Pitch, catches perfectly what it really means to be a football fan - and in doing so, what it means to be a man. 'Hornby has put his finger on truths that have been unspoken for generations' Irish Times 'Funny, wise and true' Roddy Doyle

Author: Graham Morse
Publisher: Kings Road Publishing
ISBN: 1782193774
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Sir Walter Winterbottom was arguably the most influential man in modern English football. He is known as the first England team manager, but more than that he was an innovator of modern coaching, sports administrator and a man ahead of his time; a man who had a profound effect on English football and who laid the foundations for England's success in 1966. Walter managed them all, from Lawton to Charlton, and inspired many to become coaches: Ron Greenwood, Bill Nicholson, Jimmy Hill and Bobby Robson were amongst his disciples and took his gospel to the clubs they managed. Born in 1913, Winterbottom started out as a teacher and physical education instructor, playing amateur football in his spare time. He was soon signed up by Manchester United, playing his first game 1936 and winning promotion to the First Division in 1938. A spinal ailment curtailed his career, but during World War II he served as an officer in the Royal Air Force before the FA appointed him as national director of coaching and England team manager in 1946.He remains the ony manager to have taken the national side to more than two World Cup finals and was created an OBE in 1963 and a CBE in 1972 before being knighted in 1978. Walter died in 2002 but his legacy continues to inspire many in football today, especially with the opening of the new St George's Park football academy. With interviews and insight from top football names, this book - written by Winterbottom's son-in-law - also draws on personal diaries, photographs and letters. However, this is more than just a biography of one man - it's the story of how modern football came about.

Author: David Winner
Publisher: ABRAMS
ISBN: 1468309293
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This follow-up to Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer is “an enchanting love letter to English football” (The Daily Telegraph). In this playful, witty, and highly original look at English soccer, David Winner, author of the acclaimed Brilliant Orange, journeys to the heart of an essential English pastime and sheds new light on the true nature of a rapidly changing game that was never really meant to be beautiful. With the same insightful eye he brought to his bestselling study of Dutch soccer, Winner shows how Victorian sexual anxiety underlies England’s many World Cup failures. He reveals the connection between Roy Keane and a soldier who never lived but died in the “Charge of the Light Brigade.” And he demonstrates how thick mud and wet leather shaped the contours of the English soul. “It’s neither a history of the game nor a memoir, instead exploring the interplay between sport, history, and national character . . . For thinking fans of the game, this is exquisitely pleasurable reading . . . As [Winner] finds acceptance, and even fondness, for the English game, his insight, humor, warmth, and enthusiasm place him in the top echelon of soccer writers.” —Booklist (starred review) “Thank God for David Winner . . . With an easy wit, Winner traces the game back to its roots and the results are as intriguing as they are amusing . . . A marvelous book.” —Duncan White, FourFourTwo

Author: Michael Calvin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448149967
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Winner of The Times British Sports Book Award 2014. A fascinating insight into the enclosed world of football scouts in the UK A teenaged boy plays football in a suburban park. His name is Raheem Sterling. The call is made: “Get down here quick. This is something special”. Another boy is 8, going on 28. His name is Jack Wilshere. The referee, an Arsenal scout, spirits him away from Luton Town. A young goalkeeper struggles on loan at Cheltenham Town in League Two. His name is Jack Butland. Within months he will be playing for England. Welcome to football’s hidden tribe. Scouts are everywhere yet nowhere, faceless and nameless, despite making the informed decisions worth millions. Award-winning sportswriter Michael Calvin opens up their hidden world, examining their disconnected lifestyles, petty betrayals and unconsidered professionalism of men who spend long, lonely hours on the road.

Author: Michael Farquhar
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140280241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
From Nero's nagging mother (whom he found especially annoying after taking her as his lover) to Catherine's stable of studs (not of the equine variety), here is a wickedly delightful look at the most scandalous royal doings you never learned about in history class. Gleeful, naughty, sometimes perverted-like so many of the crowned heads themselves-A Treasury of Royal Scandals presents the best (the worst?) of royal misbehavior through the ages. From ancient Rome to Edwardian England, from the lavish rooms of Versailles to the dankest corners of the Bastille, the great royals of Europe have excelled at savage parenting, deadly rivalry, pathological lust, and meeting death with the utmost indignity-or just very bad luck.

Author: Wally Lamb
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780060391621
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 884

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Book Description
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.