A comprehensive guide to soccer, discussing its origins, the World Cup, and the Olympic Games, and looking at how the sport has developed in nations around the world.

Embracing the fanatical interest in soccer, World Soccer Yearbook 2003-4 examines the game on a global level. Where other books have been club-based, league based, or specific to national teams, this is the first true survey of soccer around the world--from its origins in the 19th century, to the national, league, and club standings in the 2002-3 season. Exciting action-photographs, dynamic graphics, and illustrated charts take a refreshing and innovative approach to illustrating the world's most popular sport.

Soccer is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world, gaining huge media coverage and reaching all levels of society in countries all around the world. More than just entertainment, soccer has proved to be a reflection of national, cultural, community and ethnic identity as well as an indication of the development and international status of post-colonial nation states. For those nations still at the fringes of the modern global game, soccer represents a vision of potential commercialisation, capable of generating foreign reserves and bringing in considerable economic power. This book explores aspects of the development of soccer in countries which have recently been marginalised in world soccer or have only erratic success on the international stage. These fringe nations include a greater part of Africa, the USA, Australia, Israel, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Maldives and Sri Lanka, and while these countries are rarely noticed by the global football media, they nonetheless have great potential to excel, and many have a rich soccer heritage that still holds a place of central importance in the every day life of the people. This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Contains a bibliography of books for young adults that deal with sports and includes over 3,000 titles.

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.

Every single new Ebert review.

Profiles of member countries and their dependencies, with statistical tables and a directory of Commonwealth organisations.

Compiled and produced under the auspices of UEFA - the Union of European Football Associations - this yearbook contains information on various major matches played across the continent in the 2007-08 season at club and international level, right up to the end of June. It covers club football and various nations' international progress.

This yearbook is a comprehensive reference guide to all aspects of life in this region. It covers local aspects of politics, business studies, economics, European studies and media studies.