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How Football (Nearly) Came Home
- Adventures in Putin’s World Cup
- Narrated by: Rupert Farley
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's summary
The summer of 2018: England sweltered in the most sustained heat wave for 42 years, the government tore itself apart over deals and no deals, and hundreds of miles away, in a taciturn and strange state, the national football team did the unthinkable in the World Cup: they didn’t screw it up.
The England team that touched down in Russia for the 2018 World Cup was a new-look outfit: there were no real stars, no overblown egos and no dickheads. Still reeling from the wincing exit to Iceland in the 2016 Euros, expectations were at an all-time low. Qualification had been smooth if not spectacular, and pundits and fans alike were lukewarm about the team’s chances. Just avoiding embarrassment would have counted as some kind of success. As the tournament kicked off, a stunningly stage-managed occasion by Putin and his cronies at FIFA, we all took a deep inhale of breath and waited for the inevitable: technical ineptitude and crap penalties.
How wrong we were. Over the next three weeks, as back home we dissolved in the heat, our football team gave us reason to believe. We squeaked a win against Tunisia, trounced Panama and had a great tactical defeat to Belgium to open up the draw to the final. We all bought waistcoats and eulogised Southgate’s calm, fatherly manner. We all fell in love with ‘Slabhead’, aka Harry Maguire. And we did it all to the tune of ‘It’s Coming Home’.
Barney Ronay was there through the whole tournament, crisscrossing Russia as he followed the England team, and the rest, on their quest for glory. Here, he captures the sights and sounds, the twists and turns, the bad food and the great football that contributed to making this World Cup one of the greatest of all time.
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- By Anonymous User on 08-22-24
By: Thomas Pletzinger, and others
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The Football Ramble
- By: Marcus Speller, Pete Donaldson, Luke Aaron Moore, and others
- Narrated by: Marcus Speller, Pete Donaldson, Luke Aaron Moore, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Downloaded over 10 million times a year, The Football Ramble podcast has established itself as the essential independent voice of football punditry. The weekly podcast has resonated with supporters around the world, and their sold-out live shows have been a massive hit with supporters. This audiobook is a collaboration by all four presenters and tackles the real issues from fans you won't see or hear on Sky Sports - or anywhere else, for that matter.
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Best Performance
- By Amazon Customer on 11-15-16
By: Marcus Speller, and others
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Men in Blazers Present Encyclopedia Blazertannica
- A Suboptimal Guide to Soccer, America's "Sport of the Future" Since 1972
- By: Michael Davies, Roger Bennett
- Narrated by: Roger Bennett, Michael Davies
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Soccer has been America's Sport of the Future since 1972. The Men in Blazers are two English-born, soccer-obsessed broadcasters who have savored the dizzying growth of the game along with millions of Americans, as if it was a rollicking, sporting telenovela playing out in real life. Written in such a way that fully immerses Americans in the history and culture of the world's game, their Encyclopedia Blazertannica relives the careers of such greats such as George Best, Maradona, Beckham...and Alexi Lalas.
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complete horsecrap
- By Jordan on 06-07-18
By: Michael Davies, and others
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Rome 1960
- The Olympics that Changed the World
- By: David Maraniss
- Narrated by: David Maraniss
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
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The athletes competing in the 1960 Rome Olympics included some of the most honored in Olympic history: decathlete Rafer Johnson, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, and Louisville boxer Cassius Clay, who at 18 seized the world stage for the first time, four years before he became Muhammad Ali.
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Very Good Book
- By Jay on 07-30-08
By: David Maraniss
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I Think, Therefore I Play
- By: Andrea Pirlo, Alciato Alessandro
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrea Pirlo is one of the finest footballers of his generation - a World Cup and Champions League winning playmaker who has redefined his position at the base of midfield, and one of the most deadly free-kick takers the game has known. This is his story, in his words. It is written with a level of humour and insight which confound his image as a dead-eyed assassin on the field of play.
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Short and Sweet
- By Gary Meenaghan on 01-07-24
By: Andrea Pirlo, and others
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Slaying the Tiger
- A Year Inside the Ropes on the New PGA Tour
- By: Shane Ryan
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a decade, golf was dominated by one galvanizing figure: Eldrick "Tiger" Woods. But as his star has fallen, a new, ambitious generation has stepped up to claim the crown. Once the domain of veterans, golf saw a youth revolution in 2014. In Slaying the Tiger, Shane Ryan introduces us to the volatile, colorful crop of heirs apparent who are storming the barricades of this traditionally old-fashioned sport.
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Reader knows no golf
- By James Trainor on 04-19-18
By: Shane Ryan
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The Keeper
- A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them
- By: Ali Benjamin, Tim Howard
- Narrated by: J.D. Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 2014, Tim Howard became an overnight sensation after more than 10 years as one of America's leading professional soccer players. His record-breaking 15 saves for the United States national team against Belgium in the World Cup electrified a nation that had only recently woken up to the Beautiful Game after decades of hibernation. In this inspiring and candid memoir, the beloved US and Everton goalkeeper finally allows himself to do something that he would never do on the field: He drops his guard.
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Tim Howard Saves more then Goals!
- By Ron on 12-16-14
By: Ali Benjamin, and others
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The Series
- What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now
- By: Ken Dryden
- Narrated by: Ken Dryden
- Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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SEPTEMBER 2, 1972, MONTREAL FORUM, GAME ONE: The best against the best for the first time. Canada, the country that had created the game; the Soviet Union, having taken it up only twenty-six years earlier. On the line: more than the players, more than the fans, more than Canadians and Russians knew. So began an entirely improbable, near-month-long series of games that became more and more riveting, until, for the eighth, and final, and deciding game—on a weekday, during work and school hours all across the country—the nation stopped.
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Fantastic, just wish it was longer
- By Michel O'Hara on 09-09-22
By: Ken Dryden
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Monsters
- The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football
- By: Rich Cohen
- Narrated by: Tom Taylorson
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever - a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city. It was not just that the Monsters of the Midway won but how they did it....
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For any Bears fans
- By Frank S. Saltiel on 11-18-21
By: Rich Cohen
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The Keeper - Young Readers' Edition
- The Unguarded Story of Tim Howard
- By: Tim Howard
- Narrated by: William Harper
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In this heartwarming and candid memoir, Tim Howard does something he would never do on a soccer field: he drops his guard. As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal for the US national team and for Everton in the English Premier League, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette's syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.
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Don't judge a book by it's cover.
- By Anonymous User on 08-17-17
By: Tim Howard
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On Tennis
- Five Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
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Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform
- By Darwin8u on 01-27-17
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A Life Too Short
- The Tragedy of Robert Enke
- By: Ronald Reng
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Why does an international footballer with the World at his feet decide to take his own life? On November 10, 2009, the German national goalkeeper Robert Enke stepped in front of a passing train. He was 32 years old. Viewed from the outside, Enke had it all. Here was a professional goalkeeper who had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Jose Mourinho's Benfica and Louis Van Gaal's Barcelona. Enke was destined to be his country's first choice for years. But beneath the veneer of success lay a darker story.
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Depression is real, this story brings it home.
- By Bob Seavers on 12-13-19
By: Ronald Reng
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The Tour According to G
- My Journey to the Yellow Jersey
- By: Geraint Thomas
- Narrated by: Dafydd Pritchard
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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For years Geraint Thomas appeared blessed with extraordinary talent but jinxed at the greatest bike race in the world: twice an Olympic gold medallist on the track, Commonwealth champion, yet at the Tour de France a victim of crashes, bad luck and his willingness to sacrifice himself for his teammates. In the summer of 2018, that curse was blown away in spectacular fashion - from the cobbles of the north and the iconic mountain climbs of the Alps to the brutal slopes of the Pyrenees and, finally, the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
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Not a fan of GT but really enjoyed the book
- By Richy on 01-27-19
By: Geraint Thomas
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Boom Town
- The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, its Chaotic Founding... its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis
- By: Sam Anderson
- Narrated by: Sam Anderson
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Oklahoma City was born from chaos. It was founded in a bizarre but momentous "Land Run" in 1889, when thousands of people lined up along the borders of Oklahoma Territory and rushed in at noon to stake their claims. Since then, it has been a city torn between the wild energy that drives its outsize ambitions and the forces of order that seek sustainable progress.
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OKC’s Past & Present Weaved Together
- By dan on 09-09-18
By: Sam Anderson
What listeners say about How Football (Nearly) Came Home
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Vik
- 01-20-19
Reliving an odd world cup
A very good recollection of the events in Russia. Good book if you are a football fan.
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