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‘Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win’ Gary Lineker Packed with exclusive interviews with key protagonists, Raphael Honigstein’s book lifts the lid on the secrets of German football’s success. 13th July 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time. Germany forward Mario Götze, receiving a floated pass from his international teammate André Schürrle, jumps slightly to meet the ball and cushion it with his chest. Landing on his left foot, he takes a step with his right, swivels, and in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground, volleys it past the onrushing Argentine goalkeeper into the far corn...
Starting with the origin of the modern game in the late nineteenth century, Honigstein traces the development of English football from its public-school origins to the glory years of Ramsey and beyond, exploring the culture and foundational myths of a peculiarly English invention. Is English football really about manliness, hard work, fair play, and a never-say-die attitude? Why is there so little room in our game for individual brilliance? And just why are we so hung up on beating the Germans? Provocative, incisive, and very topical, Englischer Fussball is the product of an outsider's life-long love affair with English football, a book that explores the difference between how we see ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us. From hooligans to sex scandals, Wayne Rooney to Stanley Matthews, it asks what football can teach us about the English national character.
JüKlopp's coaching career began in the German second tier at the unfashionable club of FSV Mainz 05, whom he steered to the Bundesliga for the first time in forty-one years. In 2008, he joined Borussia Dortmund, where he achieved back-to-back league titles and took the club to the UEFA Champions League final. He left Germany for one of the England's most challenging jobs: to manage Liverpool, a once-mighty club that had not managed sustained success since the 1980s. It was not a task for the fainthearted. Anfield, Liverpool's home, is a temple to flamboyant attacking soccer powered by passion. In Klopp, Liverpool finally found a manager who embodied the essence of the club. Klopp is dynamic...
René Stauffer has been closely covering Roger Federer's career for nearly 25 years. In this comprehensive biography, Stauffer talks at length to the man himself, his family, friends, coaches and rivals to paint an unrivalled picture of the greatest male tennis player of all time. From his early life in Basel, Switzerland, where he first picked up a tennis racquet, to the heights of his 20th Grand Slam victory and all points in between, Stauffer reveals the secrets to Federer's success, the hardships and doubts that he has faced and examines the legacy that Federer has created in the modern game.
At Arsenal, the club where he won the FA Cup three times, Per Mertesacker was affectionately called the 'Big Friendly German.' Standing at 6ft 6in, he was the defender who took fitness so seriously that he invested ten per-cent of his annual salary on personal therapists. His endurance would help him in a decade- long career with the German national team which culminated in him lifting the World Cup in 2014. In his autobiography, Mertesacker reveals the story of that summer in Brazil, explaining the tactical tricks of Jogi Low as well as the motivational arts of Arsene Wenger. He asks himself to what extent talent plays a role in football, having been a youth who was told he had too little of it until he was promoted by Ralf Rangnick at Hannover 96. Now the academy manager at Arsenal, Mertesacker details what it really takes to become a success in the game he started playing when he was just four years old.
Updated with a new chapter on Klopp's emotional final season at Liverpool Jürgen Klopp was confirmed as manager of Liverpool FC in October 2015 to a rapturous reception. His super-sized personality and all-or-nothing style of football and management made him the perfect choice to pump up the volume at Anfield and lift Liverpool out of a slump. Fans and club officials were delighted to get the coach they'd long admired from afar and eager to see the impact he would have on the club and the Premier League. Klopp is the manager to turn players into winners. He's authentic, approachable and funny, charming media and fans alike. He's also merciless and exceptionally driven, his quick temper bubbling away barely under the surface. Klopp's pitch-side passion has enthralled fans, leading to 2019's triumphant Champions League win and culminating in 2020 Premier League victory With exclusive access to Klopp's friends, family, colleagues and players, Raphael Honigstein goes behind-the-scenes at Liverpool to tell the definitive story of Klopp's career and how he brought Liverpool to victory.
‘MASTERFUL’ Raphael Honigstein The story of superclub Bayern Munich by the critically acclaimed author of Tor! Bayern Munich is a team of extremes. They are the most passionately supported club in Germany and the most hated. There is no doubt that they are the most successful. Winners of twenty-four domestic titles since the late 1960s, they have stood at the pinnacle of European football for almost their entire existence. Through interviews with the key protagonists, Uli Hesse tells the story of this unique club. From early run-ins with the Nazis to being dubbed FC Hollywood for their egocentric stars in the 1990s up to the sensational undercover appointment of the best coach in the world, Pep Guardiola, Hesse opens the doors on Bavaria’s superpower and takes you inside Bayern Munich.
Remember when Zinédine Zidane lifted the World Cup in 1998? Kylian Mbappé doesn't. The forward wasn't born when the French team first became world champions. But it was Mbappé's unique talent that helped France reach the summit of world football once again in 2018, erasing years of failure, rancour and shame. For Les Bleus, the road between these two highs was blighted by bitterly painful lows. Zidane's headbutt; a players' strike; infighting and recriminations; even sex scandals and blackmail. Mbappé witnessed it all as he honed his prodigious talent in the banlieues of Paris, and his story embodies France's journey from disaster to triumph. In Sacré Bleu, Matthew Spiro traces the rise, fall and rise again of Les Bleus through the lens of Kylian Mbappé. Featuring a foreword by Arsène Wenger and interviews with leading figures in French football, Spiro asks what went wrong for France and what, ultimately, went right.
For three extraordinary seasons at Bayern Munich, Martin Perarnau was given total access around the German super club – to its players, its backroom staff, its board members and, above all, to its manager, Pep Guardiola. In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed account of Guardiola's first full season at Bayern, Pep Confidential, Perarnau now lifts the lid on the Catalan's whole tenure in Bavaria. Pep Guardiola: The Evolution takes the reader on a journey through three action packed seasons as Bayern smashed domestic records yet struggled to emulate that dominance in Europe, analysing Guardiola's management style through key moments on and off the field. Perarnau reveals how Guardiola improved as a manager at Bayern despite failing to land the ultimate prize in European football, examines his decision to leave Germany to take up the challenge at Manchester City and how his managerial style will continue to evolve in the Premier League. This is more than the story of three seasons with one of the biggest clubs in the game. It is a portrait and analysis of a manager and the footballing philosophies that have beguiled the world.
'Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win' Gary Lineker Packed with exclusive interviews with key protagonists, Raphael Honigstein's book lifts the lid on the secrets of German football's success. 13th July 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time. Germany forward Mario Götze, receiving a floated pass from his international teammate André Schürrle, jumps slightly to meet the ball and cushion it with his chest. Landing on his left foot, he takes a step with his right, swivels, and in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground, volleys it past the onrushing Argentine goalkeeper into the far corner of th...