Memoirs Sports Soccer

Few people know the answers better than Emma Hayes. As the coach of Chelsea FC Women, she has led the club to 14 major trophies. She is a widely celebrated figure in sports media as a woman starting to get equal recognition in this space, and has been named TV pundit of the year by both Broadcast Magazine and the Sports Journalists Association. In this book, Emma shares her experience of managing a high-performance football team to draw out life lessons and techniques that listeners can apply to their own professional and personal circumstances.

No one knew it when their experiment began, but without any particular genius or acumen, the motley cast of billionaires and hucksters behind the modern Premier League struck gold. Pretty soon, everyone wanted to try their luck, from Russian oligarchs to Emirati sheikhs, American tycoons, and Asian Tiger titans. Some succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Some lost everything. Today, players are sold for tens of millions, clubs are valued in the billions, and games are beamed out to nearly 200 countries, all while the league struggles to preserve its English soul.

For three extraordinary seasons at Bayern Munich, Marti Perarnau was given total access around the German super club - to its players, its backroom staff, its board members and, above all, 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.

Ruud Gullit knows better than anyone else that to understand soccer you have to understand strategy. When he started playing soccer, his only "strategy" was to get the ball, outrun everyone else to the other end of the field, and score. At first it served him well, but as he advanced through the sport, he learned that it takes much more than speed to make a winning team.

Soccer. Football. The beautiful game. The world’s most popular sport goes by many names, but for decades, fans have agreed on one thing: the greatest player of all time was Pelé. Now the legendary star, ambassador, and humanitarian shares a global vision for what soccer can accomplish. Now he shares his story, his experience, and his insights on the game for the very first time. Before Messi, before Ronaldo, before Beckham, there was Edson Arantes do Nascimento - known simply as Pelé.

Mary Fowler is already a global football superstar with the Matildas, but there's so much more to the person behind the headlines and highlight-reel goals. Bloom is a mix of deeply personal experiences that have shaped Mary, behind-the-scenes insights from the Matildas' World Cup run...

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.

In 2012, Hakeem al-Araibi was a promising young player on Bahrain's national football team when he was arrested for attacking a police station during the Arab Spring, despite television footage showing him playing soccer at the time of the alleged attack. After three months of torture and wrongful imprisonment, Hakeem was released. He fled the country and made his way to Australia, where he was granted refugee status. Hakeem made a life here and was playing for the suburban Pascoe Vale Football Club, in Melbourne. He thought he was safe.

Mourinho is both a sumptuous celebration of The Special One's managerial career so far, and an enigmatic insight into his unique brand of football wisdom and philosophy. In the legendary manager's very first audiobook, and in his own images and captions, José Mourinho charts the peaks and troughs of the opening 15 years of what has been a stellar rise to the summit of the global game.

In August 2021, Kabul fell under the control of the Taliban, a militant political and fundamentalist religious faction. For Khalida Popal, it signaled the beginning of the most important battle of an already extraordinary young life—to get female soccer players out of a city where they faced imminent threat of execution simply for playing sports. Khalida first began playing soccer in a refugee camp in Pakistan after her parents fled Taliban rule. Returning to Afghanistan, she fell deeper in love with the freedom and comradeship soccer provides.

Cristiano Ronaldo, James Rodríguez, Diego Costa, David de Gea, José Mourinho... they all have one name in common: Jorge Mendes. The Portuguese soccer super agent, pulls the strings and manages the flow of millions of Euros in the global Fútbol (soccer) market.

Jamie Vardy, the free-scoring talisman behind Leicester City's Premier League champion title, has become a modern against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie thought his chances had gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels while working in a factory, his impressive performances and hard work saw him rise again.

True Genius is the definitive family-backed account of his remarkable career published to coincide with what would have been his 75th birthday. The games, the goals, the glory. This is the untold story. Written by celebrated Manchester United author Wayne Barton, this biography goes into unparalleled depth to tell the complete story for the first time of how the lad from Cregagh, Northern Ireland, became the game's first superstar. Barton has trawled the archives and spoken to a host of former team-mates, managers, friends and close family to tell his story.

What are the greatest football games ever played? Debated in every pub, stadium and dressing room up and down the country, everyone has their own opinion and their own memories of the beautiful game. Sharing his views on the greatest matches he has played in or enjoyed as a fan, Jamie Carragher takes listeners into the dressing room, on to the tour bus and out on to the pitch as he relives the defining moments of his playing career and the games that have shaped his relationship with the sport.

The full story of the man who brought unprecedented - and since unmatched - success to Liverpool FC. Bob Paisley was the quiet man in the flat cap who swept all domestic and European opposition aside and produced arguably the greatest club team that Britain has ever known. The man whose Liverpool team won trophies at a rate-per-season that dwarfs Sir Alex Ferguson’s achievements at Manchester United and who remains the only Briton to lead a team to three European Cups.

Norwegian striker Erling Haaland is only in his first season at Manchester City and yet he has taken the Premier League - and world football stage - by storm. At the halfway point in the season, in just 20 games, the distinctive star has scored 25 goals, beating last year's PL golden boot winners Son Heung-Min and Mo Salah. He is well on his way to beating the record of 34 goals in a single season - a record no one has beaten in 27 years. Known for his speed, strength and goal scoring, Haaland is a fascinating character who doesn't fit the mould of a modern-day professional footballer.

Anyone doubting that Diego Maradona was more than just a football player had only to witness the outpourings after his death on 25th November 2020. During his tempestuous life and career, he played for top clubs in South America and Europe, notably Napoli, where he became an adored hero and adopted son, and grew to be a legend in his homeland of Argentina after leading them to victory in the 1986 World Cup.

Sir Alex Ferguson es uno de los pocos líderes que verdaderamente conoce su materia. En sus treinta y ocho años dentro del mundo del fútbol, Ferguson ganó la impresionante cifra de 49 títulos y fue la pieza angular que convirtió al Manchester United en una de las grandes marcas del mundo entero. Liderazgo está estructurado alrededor de las claves estratégicas y de los valores fundamentales de la vida de Ferguson. Incluye temas que se asocian con su estilo de gestión: Disciplina, Control, Trabajo en Equipo y Motivación.

Martí Perarnau was given total access to Bayern Munich during season 2013-14. This audiobook represents the first time in the modern era that a writer has got this close to one of the elite teams of world football. At the invitation of Pep Guardiola, he shadowed the Catalan, his staff and his superstar players during training and on matchdays. Bayern smashed domestic records on their way to the double, but were humiliated by Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-final.

Jürgen Klopp is the charismatic German manager who single-handedly overthrew the accepted order in German football, taking Borussia Dortmund from nowhere to back-to-back Bundesliga titles and the Champions League final. He had long been admired in the Premiership and was finally wooed by Liverpool in the belief he could bring back the glory days to the Kop. Klopp is revered as a master tactician with his own unique playing philosophies.