This title explores everything a young reader would want to know about soccer, from World Cup winners to all-time legends. The title also features informative sidebars, a glossary, and further resources. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing Company.

The future of soccer conditioning has arrived. With content ranging from how to properly develop speed, strength, power, and agility in players at all levels to unique position-specific training guidelines and detailed return-to-play protocols, Complete Conditioning for Soccer is a real game changer. Training protocols and progressions, complete with schematics of on-field conditioning drills, guide conditioning for players from youth to professional levels. Field players of every position will increase strength to dribble through traffic. Forwards will pack more power into shots on goal. Central midfielders will improve quickness and agility to find open passing lanes and evade opponents. Goalkeepers will develop the explosiveness to cover the width of the goal to make that save. Emphasizing player movement and conditioning needs for the long term, you will learn the positional and seasonal demands that directly impact player development and performance and discover the significant differences between playing styles, positions, levels of play, and genders. To keep players game-ready, you’ll find detailed information on avoiding some of the most common soccer injuries as well as step-by-step, position-specific training protocols for players returning from injury. Written by Ryan Alexander, the director of sports science for Atlanta United Football Club (MLS), Complete Conditioning for Soccer takes the process of physical preparation for soccer to a whole new level.

Through stunning infographics and high-quality illustrations, the world of soccer is brought to life. Full of facts and stats, players and personalities, this is the beautiful game as you have never seen it before. Whether it is uncovering the most goals scored in an international tournament, or comparing the left-foot of the world's best players, the intriguing and often surprising truths of soccer are uncovered. From the legend-makers Brazil and their world cup wins, the tallest and shortest players to have graced the game, to pitting the top players against each others, these striking and fun infographics put the game's most intriguing questions to the test. Who has scored more from the penalty spot, Ronaldo or Messi? Which goalie has the safest hands? Who has received the most red cards?

Explores the history, skills, and techniques of soccer.

Build a successful team around the strengths of your players! In Soccer Systems and Strategies, two coaches of the Danish national team provide a practical guide to implementing the world's top styles of play into your game plan. They present soccer's four primary systems of play--defined by the number of players at each position and their alignment on the field--and then break down the different strategies, tactics, and styles of play that can be used within these systems. First, learn the basics of the four primary systems of play: the 4-3-3, the 4-4-2, the 3-5-2, and the 3-4-3. Second, choose a style of play that can be used within some or all of these systems. These include different attacking styles, various defensive styles, and styles that are characteristic of international soccer powers, including the Latin, British, Norwegian, South American, and African styles of play. After you determine the optimal system and style for your team, you learn how to counter opponents' tactics and how to teach your system, style, and tactics through practice instruction and drills. Detailed diagrams and plans of action for implementing the systems are included, along with insights on how to make adjustments during the game. Top coaches throughout the world have proven that adapting your system to match your players' strengths and your opponents' weaknesses is the key to developing teams that are competitive year in and year out. With Soccer Systems and Strategies, you have all the information you need to implement the ideal system for your team.

Speed kills! Indeed. Speed in soccer can be a potent weapon in matches. With the game offering so many different systems of play, the Speed of Play system used by so many professional and top-level amateur teams can be taught to youth teams. Using the Total Soccer Fitness & Training’s “Speed of Play Coaching Pyramid,” this book can show coaches how to teach the Speed of Play system to their players using myriad Speed, Agility, and Quickness (SAQ) drills and concepts. Players can be coached to become faster both with and without the ball. And using the Total Soccer Fitness & Training’s “Building Blocks to Player Development,” this book shows how to incorporate individual and small-group into a team environment.

Whether you want to bend it like Beckham or dribble like Ronaldinho, The Soccer Book is the ultimate visual guide to soccer skills, rules, tactics, and coaching, illustrating every aspect of every variant of the sport more clearly, and in more detail, than any other book has done before.

Essential Soccer Skills progresses from beginner basics to advanced techniques, featuring illustrated sequences on how to learn and master key skills, and tips on how to improve your overall form. Essential Soccer Skills covers everything from the basics and rules of the game to the types of players--goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, attackers--to skills and team tactics like stepovers, heading, and volleying. Essential Soccer Skills is the go-to guide for anyone interested in learning more about soccer and becoming a better player.

Arguably the world's most popular sport, soccer has its own colorful lore, still little known in a nation only now beginning to give the game its due. This book offers the perfect opportunity to catch up on soccer's rich historyand to discover some of the funniest, most ironic, outlandish, and tragic stories ever to come out of the world of sports. Taking readers as far afield as the Faeroe Islands, Thailand, Madagascar, Belarus, Bhutan, and the North Pole, the selections inSoccer Storiesrange from the strange (Brazilian players paid in cattle by their cash-strapped club) to the wild (the Mexican prison warden who threw open all the cell doors in celebration of a World Cup victory) to the comical (the referee who ejected himself). Here is the plane crash that wiped out the Italian team on the eve of its fifth straight national championship; the spiteful African club that scored 149 goals against itself in one game; and the youngster who banked a shot into the goal off a passing seagull. As lively as it is informative,Soccer Storieswill engage fans of all levels.