Download or read book Commitment written by Didier Drogba and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of one of the most recognisable and successful players in world football. Didier Drogba is renowned for his heading ability, sharp shooting and sheer strength. He has played for his native Ivory Coast and for clubs in France, China and Turkey, but it is as a Chelsea striker that he is best known. His feats with Chelsea have made him a cult hero among supporters. In Didier Drogba's honest and revealing autobiography he will talk about life as an immigrant in Paris, the importance of his education and how finding success later than most professional footballers has kept him grounded. In 2012 Didier was voted Chelsea's greatest ever player. He talks from a privileged behind-the-scenes position about tactics and how he felt mentally and physically as well as anecdotes from the dressing room. Didier provides unique insight into important and controversial matches from the first trophy he won with them in 2005 to the Premier League title a decade later; as well as what persuaded him to stay when he was at his lowest ebb. Away from football Drogba has been widely applauded for his involvement in trying to broker peace in the Ivorian civil war - he is a UN Goodwill Ambassador and does a huge amount of work with the Didier Drogba Foundation - Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. Go behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge and find out about life on and off the field for this humble Chelsea hero.

Download or read book Didier Drogba Portrait of a Hero written by John McShane and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2008-07-07 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Didier Drogba...the name strikes fear into defenders throughout football and excites fans around the world. The giant forward's life story is as amazing as some of the goals which have turned him into a hero on two continents.Born in 1978 in Abidjan, the capital of the troubled African state of Ivory Coast, he was sent to live in France with an uncle, a professional footballer, at the tender age of five. At the age of nineteen, Drogba signed with Le Mans before moving to Guingamp and becoming an Ivory Coast international.In 2004, Chelsea splashed out GBP 24 million to bring him from Olympique Marseilles to Stamford Bridge. His goals and commitment won supporters' hearts but he has courted controversy along the way, apparently confessing to 'diving' in opposition penalty areas, and his sending off in a brutal Champions League clash with Barcelona led to one of the world's top referees quitting the game. He has even had to face competition for his place from Ukrainian goal-machine Andriy Shevchenko.Now, one of the highest-paid footballers in the world, his amazing life story reveals the struggle of his early years, his battle for acceptance on and off the football field and the truth about his rivalry with Shevchenko in a story that really is stranger than fiction.

Download or read book Didier Drogba written by Didier Drogba and published by Aurum Press. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Didier Drogba is one of the most talented and also most unpredictable players in English football. Brought to Chelsea by Jose Mourinho after success with Marseille in France, he quickly became one of the most lethal strikers in the Premiership and helped Chelsea to the highest success. But then Mourinho – whom Drogba idolised and whose Foreword reveals the admiration is mutual – departed, and the revolving door of managers that followed saw Drogba disaffected, injured, left out of the side and, the nadir, sent off in the 2008 Champions League final. But now under the new coach Guus Hiddink he is fit again and scoring high-pressure goals and a match for any defence.Characteristically, Drogba first published his autobiography in French, and not for him the empty succession of clichés about a great bunch of lads and a game of ninety minutes. This is a story of growing up in West Africa, then an unsettling emigration to France, and a rise to the highest echelon of football there before Chelsea’s money came beckoning. It is a controversial book – Drogba found Chelsea in his first months a thoroughly unwelcoming and lonely place – and about much more than football: in his native Ivory Coast Drogba is a hero and even something of a political campaigner for whom peace and prosperity there is more important than any football bauble.Didier Drogba plays for Chelsea and the Ivory Coast.

Download or read book Didier Drogba written by Gabin Guehi Bao and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Football Men written by Simon Kuper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-05-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great footballers and coaches are rarely glimpsed from up close. They shield themselves from the tabloids, hide their personalities behind professionalism, and in the words of the cliché, 'do their talking on the pitch'. This book gets up close to them. The Football Menis not a series of celebrity profiles, and it doesn't attempt to unearth secrets in the players' private lives. Rather, it portrays these men as three-dimensional human beings. It describes their upbringings, the football cultures they grew up in, the way they play, and the baggage that they bring to their relationships at work. This multimillion-pound, multinational world is mostly inhabited by ordinary men. The profiles in this book are sometimes funny, but never breathless or sensational. Some of the profiles in this book are based on interviews; others are the results of time the author spent with that person; sometimes the profile is a story of a country. All are fascinating and shed light on their subject to reveal things you wouldn't expect. From one of the great sports writers of our time this is a penetrating and surprising collection of articles on the figures that have defined the modern sporting world.

Download or read book Soccer Empire written by Laurent Dubois and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When France both hosted and won the World Cup in 1998, the face of its star player, Zinedine Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, was projected onto the Arc de Triomphe. During the 2006 World Cup finals, Zidane stunned the country by ending his spectacular career with an assault on an Italian player. In Soccer Empire, Laurent Dubois illuminates the connections between empire and sport by tracing the story of World Cup soccer, from the Cup’s French origins in the 1930s to Africa and the Caribbean and back again. As he vividly recounts the lives of two of soccer’s most electrifying players, Zidane and his outspoken teammate, Lilian Thuram, Dubois deepens our understanding of the legacies of empire that persist in Europe and brilliantly captures the power of soccer to change the nation and the world.

Download or read book Soccer Men written by Simon Kuper and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simon Kuper's New York Times bestseller Soccernomics pioneered a new way of looking at soccer through meticulous empirical analysis and incisive -- and witty -- commentary. Kuper now leaves the numbers and data behind to explore the heart and soul of the world's most popular sport in the new, extraordinarily revealing Soccer Men. Soccer Men goes behind the scenes with soccer's greatest players and coaches. Inquiring into the genius and hubris of the modern game, Kuper details the lives of giants such as Arsè Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Jorge Valdano, Lionel Messi, Kakáand Didier Drogba, describing their upbringings, the soccer cultures they grew up in, the way they play, and the baggage they bring to their relationships at work. From one of the great sportswriters of our time, Soccer Men is a penetrating and surprising anatomy of the figures that define modern soccer.

Download or read book The Big Book of Football by Mundial written by Mundial and published by Wide Eyed Editions. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dive into the wonderful world of football with this essential guide containing everything youll ever need to know about the beautiful game.

Download or read book The Language of the Game written by Laurent Dubois and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-03-27 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for soccer fans as the 2022 World Cup approaches, this lively and lyrical book is "an ideal guide to the world's most popular sport" (Simon Kuper, coauthor of Soccernomics). Soccer is not only the world's most popular game; it's also one of the most widely shared forms of global culture. The Language of the Game is a passionate and engaging introduction to soccer's history, tactics, and human drama. Profiling soccer's full cast of characters—goalies and position players, referees and managers, commentators and fans—historian and soccer scholar Laurent Dubois describes how the game's low scores, relentless motion, and spectacular individual performances combine to turn each match into a unique and unpredictable story. He also shows how soccer's global reach makes it an unparalleled theater for nationalism, international conflict, and human interconnectedness, with close attention to both men's and women's soccer. Filled with perceptive insights and stories both legendary and little known, The Language of the Game is a rewarding read for anyone seeking to understand soccer better—newcomers and passionate followers alike.

Download or read book Made in Africa written by Ed Aarons and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2018/19 Premier League season was a historic one for African players in English football. More than 130 years after Arthur Wharton became the first, Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah shared the Golden Boot with Arsenal's Gabon striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in a record-breaking campaign that saw Liverpool pipped for the title by a point by Manchester City. A statue of Wharton now stands at the Football Association's headquarters at St George's Park – a testament to his status as an important pioneer of the game. But the story of how it got there, just like many of the African players who followed in his path such as Steve Mokone, Albert Johanneson, Peter Ndlovu, Christopher Wreh, Lucas Radebe and Didier Drogba, is far from straightforward. Ed Aarons describes how they confronted racism to help change the face of English football forever, enabling the modern generation of superstars like Mané and Salah to flourish. Detailing their remarkable journeys to Anfield from Senegal and Egypt, Made in Africa also features an exclusive interview with Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp - who broke the transfer record for an African player for the third time in the space of 14 months when he signed Naby Keïta for almost £53m in August 2017. He explains how the club's African contingent played an integral role in the thrilling climax to the season that ended with them becoming European champions for the sixth time.

Download or read book My Winning Season written by John Terry and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2005 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Terry's own account of Chelsea's 2004/05 season, culminating in the championship trophy the Stamford Bridge fans have been craving for more than half a century. It is a remarkable story and a tribute to the Chelsea captain's influence on and off the field.

Download or read book Jamie Vardy From Nowhere My Story written by Jamie Vardy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sunday Times Bestseller and Number 1 Sport Book of 2016 'A tale that's truly inspirational' The Sun An ordinary lad from Sheffield, Jamie Vardy has become known as an against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Yet a few years ago, things couldn’t have been any more different. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Jamie thought his chance was gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels, while still working in a factory, his off-the-cuff performances saw him rise. Jamie had a wild and turbulent youth, but football became his saving grace and, once he filled his boots with goals at FC Halifax Town and Fleetwood Town, he moved to Leicester City. After the miracle of surviving relegation, the team of unlikely outsiders bonded together to achieve the unthinkable: Jamie set the record as the first player to score in 11 consecutive Premier League matches and Leicester beat odds of 5000-1 to become champions. Jamie has now been nominated for the Ballon d’Or, firmly establishing himself as one of England’s leading goal scoring footballers. Not forgetting his roots, however, he has set up the V9 Academy in a bid to find the next big talent from non-league football. Defying all expectations, this is the story of the boy from nowhere who reached the top in his own unflinching, honest words.

Download or read book Our Heroes written by Sean Fraser and published by Pearson South Africa. This book was released on 2009 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Moody Blue written by Marco Negri and published by Pitch Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marco Negri was born to score goals--though little did he know that 13 years after cutting his teeth with Serie A side Udinese, he would become a cult hero in Scotland. When Walter Smith shelled out £3.5m, snatching the 27-year-old from the grasps of the Italian superpowers, Rangers fans were in for a mighty shock. Negri smashed in 33 goals in his first 29 games, breaking goalscoring records galore in tandem with Gascoigne and Laudrup. A match made in heaven? Perhaps not, as an eye injury was soon to halt this goal-grabbing juggernaut. Frustrating injuries, reports of unrest and loan deals ruled the remainder of his time at Ibrox. Neverthless, Marco Negri's name was already written in Rangers history, his cult status as inevitable as fans' tantalizing tales of what might have been. For the first time, here is the astonishing story of one of soccer's most enigmatic characters.

Download or read book Diego Costa written by Fran Guillen and published by Birlinn. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer 2014. Diego Costa has arrived for his first day as a Chelsea player and he has something he wants to say to his new team-mates. He's been practising a single, short sentence. Actually, a mission statement. "I go to war - you come with me." In The Art of War, Fran Guillen retraces every step of Costa's brutal, exhilarating journey: from street footballer in his home city of Lagarto, north-east Brazil, to La Liga winner at Atletico Madrid, through loan spells at Celta Vigo, Albacete, Valladolid and Rayo Vallecano, and finally to Premier League champion with Chelsea in 2015. Through exclusive interviews with coaches, team-mates, agents and friends, Spanish journalist Guillen uncovers the inside story of Costa's arrival in Portugal as a 17 year old and his move to Atletico Madrid where, under Diego Simeone, the player's goalscoring finally started to eclipse his fearsome reputation and saw his emergence as one of the world's greatest strikers. Then in 2014 Costa made the shock decision to defect from the Brazilian side and play for Spain in the World Cup. After a disastrous tournament, Costa joined Jose Mourinho's Chelsea and immediately dispelled the ghosts of Brazil by taking the Premier League by storm in an indomitable debut season at Stamford Bridge. This is an inspiring and insightful portrait of English football's new superstar. Let's go to war.

Download or read book How to Be a Footballer written by Peter Crouch and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Very funny on almost every page, wonderfully self-deprecating and very sharp on the ludicrous behaviour of the modern player' - Sunday Times 'The funniest man in British sport' - Metro **A Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year** **Shortlisted for the National Book Awards** **Longlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year** You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you're suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We'll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benitez and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions. I am Peter Crouch. This is How To Be A Footballer. Shall we?

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Cote d Ivoire The Ivory Coast written by Cyril K. Daddieh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Côte d’Ivoire remains one of the most intriguing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It appeared well on its way to becoming a model of development under its single political party and charismatic founding father, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, when it fell on hard economic times in the 1980s. Poor management of the socio-economic challenges by Houphouët-Boigny’s successors produced disastrous political consequences, including unprecedented political violence, the first-ever successful military coup, and two civil wars, culminating in former President Laurent Gbagbo being sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to stand trial for war crimes. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Cote d'Ivoire (The Ivory Coast) contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Cote d'Ivoire.