Football is the world's most popular sport. It is a cultural phenomenon and a global media spectacle. For its billions of fans, it serves as a common language. But where does its enduring popularity come from? Featuring essays from prominent experts in the field, scholars and journalists, this Companion covers ground seldom attempted in a single volume about football. It examines the game's oft-disputed roots and traces its development through Europe, South America and Africa, analysing whether resistance to the game is finally beginning to erode in China, India and the United States. It dissects the cult of the manager and how David Beckham redefined sporting celebrity. It investigates the game's followers, reporters and writers, as well as its most zealous money makers and powerful administrators. A valuable resource for students, scholars and general readers, The Cambridge Companion to Football is a true and faithful companion for anyone fascinated by the people's game.

Product Description: In every Five Nations - and now Six Nations - season the real showdown is always that between England and Wales: Wales with its history of playing the finest rugby of all the home nations, England with its enviable strength in depth and forward muscle...read more

Product Description: Rugby union has undergone immense change in the past two decades—introducing a World Cup, accepting professionalism, and creating a global market in players. This book brings the game's colorful story entirely up to date. It covers all of the great games, teams, and players, but also explores the social, political, and economic changes which have affected the course of rugby's development...read more

Product Description: "The Bounce of the Century" they called it. A ball kicked across Cardiff Arms Park in the dying minutes of a match between two of international rugby's fiercest rivals. Dragons and All Blacks tells of what happened when Wales played New Zealand in 1953...read more

Product Description: Strategy exhibits a pervasive commitment to the belief that the best approach to adopt in dealing with affairs of the world is to confront, overcome and subjugate things to conform to our will, control and eventual mastery. Performance is about sustaining distinctiveness...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: For many sports fans in Wales, football is very much the game. In recent decades, rugby may have received more media attention, but there is some justification for the claim that it is soccer which is truly the national game of Wales...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This text investigates why the Left has failed to develop a lasting popular journalism in Britain, when at one point, "The Daily Herald" - jointly owned by the Labour party and the TUC - was outselling any other newspaper in the world with the exception of "Pravda"...read more