The most popular sport in the world is guaranteed to have its fair share of rivalries. Does winning a World Cup make a team the best? Or does Olympic gold deserve the glory? Discover some of soccer's biggest rivalries past and present and decide for yourself who's the best.

While rivalry is embedded in any sporting event or performance, soccer, the world’s most popular mass spectator sport, has been an emblem of such rivalries since its inception as an organized sport. Some of these rivalries grow to become long-term and perennial by their nature, extent, impact and legacy, from the local to the global level. They represent identities based on widely diverse affiliations of human life—locality, region, nation, continent, community, class, culture, religion, ethnicity, and so on. Yet, at times, such rivalries transcend barriers of space and time, where soccer-clubs, -nations, -personalities, -organizations, -styles and -fans float and compete with intriguing identities. The present volume brings into focus some of the most fascinating and enduring rivalries in the world of soccer. It attempts to encapsulate, analyse and reconstruct those rivalries—between nations, between clubs, between personalities, between styles of play, between fandoms, and between organizations—in a historical perspective in relation to diverse identities, competing ideologies, contestations of power, psychologies of attachment, bonds of loyalty, notions of enmity, articulations of violence, and affinities of fan culture—some of the core manifestations of sporting rivalry. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.

Soccer fans worldwide love nothing more than to cheer their team to victory over their most heated rival. Soccer rivalries take many forms, from international duels between countries down to local grudge matches between clubs who share the same city. This title introduces readers to some of the top rivalries in the world, explaining how they began and why they are still important today. The title features informative sidebars, exciting photos, a glossary, and an index. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

An investigation of the intrigue, politics and culture behind El Clásico - the hard-fought, long-running contest between two of the world's biggest football clubs - explaining the place sport's greatest rivalry has in Spanish life and the world of football.

One of Mike Atherton's 'Top Ten Best Sports Books' in The Times In 1974 the brilliant and controversial Brian Clough made perhaps his most eccentric decision: he accepted the Leeds United manager's job. As successor to Don Revie, his bitter adversary, he was to last only 44 days. In one of the most acclaimed novels of this or any other year, David Peace takes us into the mind and thoughts of Ol'Big'Ead himself, and brings vividly to life one of post-war Britain's most complex and fascinating characters.

A celebration of the classic football derby matches. From the Celtic–Rangers rivalry and Tyneside derby to the biggest global clashes from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, journalist Andy Mitten uses the fans' own words and stories to illuminate the conflicts, tensions, histories and culture behind these fascinating games.

The sixteen original essays in this collection cover influential and famous rivalries from a variety of sports, including track and field, golf, boxing, basketball, tennis, ice skating, baseball, football, soccer, and more. The essays are diverse, but together they illustrate what is common to any rivalry: equally matched opponents that often have decidedly different backgrounds, styles, and personalities. These differences may center on race and culture, political and societal ideologies, personality, geography, or religion—a mix intensified by fans and the media. From highly publicized and emotionally charged individual competitions to bitterly fought team contests, Rivals illuminates what one-of-a-kind opponents and the passion they inspire tell us about ourselves and our society.

Boca-River, Red Star-Partizan, Lazio-Roma, Celtic-Rangers, England-Scotland, Racing Club-Velez, Hamburg-St.Pauli, Glentoran-Linfield, Feyenoord-Ajax, Ireland-Northern Ireland, Inter-Milan, Genoa-Sampdoria, Real Madrid-Barcelona, Sporting-Benfica, Birmingham-Villa. A journey through some big football rivalries that simply mean more than a game to a lot of people.Think of your local school rivalry as a kid and times it by a million, to get some of the raw passion of these games.Bigotry, pyro, tifo and mayhem accompany most of them. Being struck by baguettes in Madrid, blocks of ice in Buenos Aires and covered in beer in Rotterdam.This is a story of chasing match tickets, hitchhiking, cancelled games and relying on cheap flights and plenty of booze.It's all here an

Throughout the 20th century the north-east of England was synonymous with heavy industry and football. Coal mining, railways and ship-building provided an economic base upon which football - professional and amateur - flourished. Middlesbrough, Newcastle United and Sunderland all established themselves as national forces by winning League titles, FA Cups and by breaking records in the transfer market and in stadium attendances. They helped shape the area's identity, its sense of itself and the country's idea of the north-east. By the end of 1990 north-east influence had peaked. The mid-1980s saw the break-up of the coal industry and the end of ship-building on the Wear and the Tyne. The industrial landscape had changed forever. In 2014 unemployment in the north-east is twice the national average. Yet north-east football culture remains as vibrant as ever. Despite consistent failure, decades-long, the north-east's appetite for football remains strong. For nearly two decades, author Michael Walker has chronicled the ups and downs of this hotbed of soccer for several national newspapers. In Up There he shows how football is the area's great uniting thread and uncovers stories about the game's rich lore. Part social history, part travelogue, Up There examines that fascination, the connection to industry and the economy, and charts some of the individuals and clubs who have helped define a region.

Why do football fans choose one club over another in cities where intense, deep-seated rivalries exist? What makes them choose family ties, politics, religion, or race? Rivals Game author Douglas Beattie spent two years getting underneath Britain's biggest tournaments to discover the answers and encover the history of football's fiercest rivalries.