The History of English Football Clubs is a comprehensive chronicle of the 133 football clubs to have played in English leagues over the last 150 years. From current Premier League juggernauts Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea to League Two minnows like Bradford (2013 FA Cup finalists) and AFC Wimbledon. Each club has a proud history of its own, not to mention a legion of passionate, usually lifelong fans. Among these 133 are 41 clubs that lost their league status in years past, realising their supporters' worst fears. In his lively and engaging voice, Shoot magazine editor Colin Mitchell tells the fascinating stories of these English sporting institutions. Text is illuminated by rare historical images, while statistics detail important achievements, players and events. This intriguing, inclusive book is a must read for any football fan, revealing the legends and legacies behind every English club, whether brave, beloved, beleaguered or forgotten.

LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE ‘The greatest story in English sport told beautifully by one of its greatest writers’ Gary Lineker 'A spellbinding piece of work' Oliver Holt; 'Absolute tour de force' Henry Winter Award-winning writer Paul Hayward delivers a compelling and unmissable account of the story of the England men's football team, published as they prepare for the World Cup in Qatar. On 30 November 1872, England took on Scotland at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, a match that is regarded as the first international fixture. More than 5,000 fans watched the two sides play out a 0-0 draw. It was the first of more than a thousand games played by the side, and the beginning of a national love affair that unites the country in a way that few other events can match. In Hayward's brilliant new biography of the team, based on interviews with dozens of past and present players and coaches, including Viv Anderson, Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and current coach Gareth Southgate, we get a vivid portrait of all aspects of the team's story, reliving highlights such as the World Cup victory in 1966 and the time when football came home in Euro 96, as well as the low points when the players were obliged to give the Nazi salute in 1938 and the era when England's hooligan fans brought shame on the nation. From Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore through to more modern heroes such as Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane, Hayward brings a large cast of characters to life. For anyone who wants to understand England football, and why it means so much to so many, England Football: The Biography is an essential and vital read.

Who is this book for? For learners of English who want to talk about football (soccer) in English. Written for football (soccer) players, football fans and football officials (referees, managers, coaches, administrators etc.) It is suitable for anyone who has at least an intermediate level of English (i.e. above B1 in reading) What topics does it cover? Football English contains exercises to help you improve your vocabulary in these areas: Kicking & Moving the Ball │ Positions │ Describing a Game │ Attacking │ Defending │ Tactics │ The Rules & The Referee │ The Score & Results │ Scoring Goals │ Shooting │ Skills & Abilities │ Management & Signings │ Chances │ Form │ Statistics │ Team Selection │ The World Cup │ The League │ Football Grounds & The Pitch │ Mistakes │ Training │ Calls │ Injuries │ Fans │ The Goal │ Fixtures │ Goalkeeping │ Heading │ Timing Who is the Author? Tom Challenger is a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. He has 10 years of experience helping people with the vocabulary and skills they need to do their particular jobs. Tom holds professional qualifications in teaching English and is a certified teacher trainer. He is also a football fan!

Present and practise English with your students through the popular context of football

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of soccer and contemporary Britain. Soccer in the United Kingdom has evolved from a jaded, working-class tradition to a sport at the heart of popular culture, from an economic mess to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. The changes in the game, David Goldblatt shows, uncannily mirror the evolution of British society. In the 1980s, soccer was described as a slum game played by slum people in slum stadiums. Such was the transformation over the following twenty-five years that novelists, politicians, poets, and bankers were all declaring their footballing loyalties. At one point, the Palace let it be known that the queen -- like her mother, Prince Harry, the chief rabbi, and the archbishop of Canterbury -- was an Arsenal fan. Soccer permeated the national life like little else, an atavistic survivor decked out in New Britain flash, a social democratic game in a cutthroat, profit-driven world. From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League (EPL) was forged in Margaret Thatcher's Britain by an alliance of the big clubs -- Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur -- the Football Association, and Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon traces the momentous economic, social, and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL -- the most popular soccer league in the world.

This book, available in paperback due to popular demand, is an ethnographic account of English football fans, based upon sixteen years' participant observation. The author identifies a distinct sub-culture of supporter – the ‘carnival fan’ – who dominated the travelling support of the three teams observed – Manchester United, Blackpool and the England national team. This accessible account follows these groups at home and abroad, describing their interpretations, motivations and behaviour and challenging a number of the myths about ‘hooliganism’ and crowd control. The text will be of value to anyone studying, researching or interested in ethnographic modes of enquiry or the behaviour of football fans. In particular it will be of value to anyone involved in the academic disciplines of policing, criminal justice, sociology, criminology, sports studies and research methods. It also makes recommendations for the management of football crowds that will be of use to practitioners involved in policing, crowd control and event management.

Racism and English Football: For Club and Country analyses the contemporary manifestations, outcomes and implications of the fractious relationship between English professional football and race. Racism, we were told, had disappeared from English football. It was relegated to a distant past, and displaced onto other European countries. When its appearance could not be denied, it was said to have reappeared. This book reveals that this was not true. Racism did not go away and did not return. It was here all along. The book argues that racism is firmly embedded and historically rooted in the game’s structures, cultures and institutions, and operates as a form of systemic discrimination. It addresses the ways that racism has tainted English football, and the manner in which football has, in turn, influenced racial meanings and formations in wider society. Equally, it explores how football has facilitated forms of occupational multiculture, black player activism and progressive fan politics that resist divisive social phenomena and offer a degree of hope for an alternative future. Focusing on a diverse range of topics, in men’s and women’s football, at club and international level, Racism and English Football extends and expands our knowledge of how racism occurs and, critically, how it can be challenged. This is an essential read for scholars and students working on race, ethnicity, sport and popular culture, together with those interested in the social and organisational dynamics of English professional football more generally.

Part 1 of this edition consists of the creation of the English football league in 1888. It includes every football league result and the final league tables to the first England International matches in the British Home International Championship results. It also provides the tables and their statistics with the first games against overseas opposition, containing all the players and their teams. Read about the oldest cup competition in the world, the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup), from its humble beginning in 1872 and every result from the first round until the final. The book also incorporates the First World War mini-tournaments to the first FA Cup Final and England Internationals played at the World famous British Empire Stadium, simply known as Wembley Stadium. Part 1 finishes with the 1929-1930 football league season. Amaze your friends with the facts! For history buffs and true sportsmen, The History of the English Football League - Part 1: 1888-1930 is a must read.

This book analyzes the transformation of English football in the 1990s. In so doing, it provides a comprehensive account of football culture in contemporary Britain that not only contributes to the study of the sport but also sheds wider light on recent transformations in British society.Although the author draws on past writings on football, the scope and analytic focus of the book are original. Starting with a theoretical and historical framework, Anthony King goes on to examine the organic political and economic developments of the last thirty years which put the big city clubs in a position to effect a division from the rest of the league. By the mid-1980s football faced both economic and crowd control crises which began to affect the consumption of the game. The End of the Terraces looks at those who implemented the changes, the new business class, and those who have been most affected—the fans.