"To be a great soccer player, you must be in love with the game." - Mia Hamm Do you love lacing up your cleats for the first game of the season--and do you love it even more when they're caked with mud after the game? Are there many nights when you dream about kicking the ball, and watching as it soars through the air toward the goal? Would your perfect day include hours on the soccer field? Do you love to watch people play, soaking up everything you can from other soccer-crazy players? Have you ever felt like your soccer team is a second family? Then you're definitely soccer-crazy . . . and this book is definitely for you From training techniques formations and strategies--this book has it all

Best Sport Ever: Soccer takes readers from the beginnings of soccer to present day with a focus on the legends, the amazing stories, and the unique characteristics that makes the sport great. Discover the ancient history of soccer, the equipment used in the game then and now, the thrill of the first goal, and the achievements of Didier Drogba, Pelé, Diego Maradona, Mia Hamm, David Beckham, and so many others in this amazing overview of the Best Sport Ever: Soccer! Through colorful descriptions, a glossary, additional resources, engaging sidebars that go "beyond the basics" into advanced skills and health benefits, and more, the Best Sport Ever series is a can't miss for today's sports fan. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

'Sport' and 'religion' are cultural institutions with a global reach. Each is characterised by ritualised performance and by the ecstatic devotion of its followers, whether in the sports arena or the cathedral of worship. This fascinating collection is the first to examine, in detail, the relationship between these two cultural institutions from an international, religiously pluralistic perspective. It illuminates the role of sport and religion in the social formation of collective groups, and explores how sport might operate in the service of a religious community. The book offers a series of cutting-edge contemporary historical case-studies, wide-ranging in their social and religious contexts. It presents important new work on the following fascinating topics: * sport and Catholicism in Northern Ireland * Shinto and sumo in Japan * women, sport and the American Jewish identity * religion, race and rugby in South Africa * sport and Islam in France and North Africa * sport and Christian fundamentalism in the US * Muhammad Ali and the Nation of Islam. With God on their Side is vital reading for all students of the history, sociology and culture of sport. It also presents important new research material that will be of interest to religious studies students, historians and anthropologists.

Through the years a wealth of information has been accumulated in soccer. Experiential and science-based knowledge abounds in the sport. Yet the scientific information has not been sufficiently disseminated to those who would benefit most from it. Soccer Science fills the void with the best and most up-to-date research in the sport. With editor Tony Strudwick and a who’s-who list of international experts on the sport, Soccer Science offers you an unprecedented wealth of advanced yet accessible information on biomechanics, physiology, psychology, skill acquisition and coaching, tactical approaches and performance and match analysis. It is simply the most significant and comprehensive published work on the sport.

The definitive book about the national identities, heroes, and dramatic stories from Latin American soccer throughout history, perfect for World Cup reading. “Golazo!” means “amazing goal!” And the word perfectly captures the unique, exuberant, all-encompassing, passionate role that soccer plays in Latin America. Andreas Campomar offers readers the definitive history of Latin American soccer from the early, deadly Mesoamerican ballgames to the multi-billion dollar international business it is today. Golazo! explores the intersection of soccer, politics, economics, high and low culture, and how passion for a game captured a continent. The triumphs, the heartbreaks, the origins and the future, the political and the personal—Golazo! is the perfect book for new fans and diehard followers around the world.

Globe and Mail columnist John Doyle explores the international phenomenon of soccer In A Great Feast of Light, John Doyle viewed his childhood in Ireland through the television screen. Now, he turns his eye to the most popular sport on the planet: soccer. It's a journey that begins with the first game John saw, in 1960s-era Ireland, through soccer in the 21st century - the World Cups in 02 and 06, the European Championships in 04 and 08. And Doyle has traveled the globe during the build-up to next year's World Cup 2010. In between the drunken fans, crazed taxi drivers, leprechauns and lederhosen, Doyle muses on the evolution of soccer as a global phenomenon. He shows a sport where for 90 minutes on the pitch anything seems possible. A game where colonized nations can tackle the power of their colonizers; where oppressed immigrant groups can thoroughly trounce their host countries. This book examines soccer from a new angle. John Doyle offers a compelling social history of the ultimate sport, each country and team competing in the historic 2010 World Cup, and how the game has kept pace as the global village has sprung up around the playing field.

The largest and most important country in Latin America, Brazil was the first to succumb to the military coups that struck that region in the 1960s and the early 1970s. In this authoritative study, Thomas E. Skidmore, one of America's leading experts on Latin America and, in particular, on Brazil, offers the first analysis of more than two decades of military rule, from the overthrow of João Goulart in 1964, to the return of democratic civilian government in 1985 with the presidency of José Sarney. A sequel to Skidmore's highly acclaimed Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964, this volume explores the military rule in depth. Why did the military depose Goulart? What kind of "economic miracle" did their technocrats fashion? Why did General Costa e Silva's attempts to "humanize the Revolution" fail, only to be followed by the most repressive regime of the period? What led Generals Geisel and Golbery to launch the liberalization that led to abertura? What role did the Brazilian Catholic Church, the most innovative in the Americas, play? How did the military government respond in the early 1980s to galloping inflation and an unpayable foreign debt? Skidmore concludes by examining the early Sarney presidency and the clues it may offer for the future. Will democratic governments be able to meet the demands of urban workers and landless peasants while maintaining economic growth and international competitiveness? Can Brazil at the same time control inflation and service the largest debt in the developing world? Will its political institutions be able to represent effectively an electorate now three times larger than in 1964? What role will the military play in the future? In recent years, many Third World nations--Argentina, the Philippines, and Uruguay, among others--have moved from repressive military regimes to democratic civilian governments. Skidmore's study provides insight into the nature of this transition in Brazil and what it may tell about the fate of democracy in the Third World.

A detailed and coherent account of the social significance and the politics underlying sports, Global Games demonstrates that sports are not a trivial pursuit but are deeply embedded in the way individuals and nations wish to be perceived. Book jacket.

"I began this book to articulate my sense of disappointment and alienation from the status I had fought so hard to achieve." A remarkable admission from an alumnus of Harvard Law School who has held tenured professorships in the law schools of Yale and Stanford and has taught in the law schools of Harvard and Chicago. In this personal reflection on the status of higher education, Julius Getman probes the tensions between status and meaning, elitism and egalitarianism, that challenge the academy and academics today. He shows how higher education creates a shared intellectual community among people of varied races and classes—while simultaneously dividing people on the basis of education and status. In the course of his explorations, Getman touches on many of the most current issues in higher education today, including the conflict between teaching and research, challenges to academic freedom, the struggle over multiculturalism, and the impact of minority and feminist activism. Getman presents these issues through relevant, often humorous anecdotes, using his own and others' experiences in coping with the constantly changing academic landscape. Written from a liberal perspective, the book offers another side of the story told in such works as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals.