San Antonio College Library

Soccer is the world's most popular sport and one of the globe's best known cultural practices. The pinnacle of the sport worldwide is the FIFA World Cup, a competition held every four years, which crowns one nation as the world champion in front of huge global television audiences: over half of the planet's population watched the 2010 FIFA World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. From the humble origins of modern soccer in Great Britain...

Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry. The authors explain how football transformed from a sport at elite boarding schools in England to become a pastime popular with the working classes, enabling factories such as the Thames Iron Works and the Woolwich Arsenal to give birth to the teams that...

In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football - from the late 1880s to the television era. Peterson describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Profiles of the most famous players of the era - including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable...

This book traces the history of soccer in Latin America, from the introduction of the game in the 1890s to the qualifying stages for the 2014 World Cup. Unlike other books focused on matches and players, Futbal! provides the necessary historical context to explain why soccer is the most important sport across Latin America.

"Using archival research, interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, adverts and photos, Laduma! chronicles the impact of indigenous sporting traditions such as stick lighting, the rise of Orlando Pirates, the emergence of rivals Moroka Swallows, and the power struggles between different football associations and white authorities. Soccer influenced class and generational divisions, shaped masculine identities, and served as a mobilising force for...

"Examines, from an economic perspective, how the different traditions of soccer and baseball have shaped the possibilities for their commercial organization and exploitation, and considers how each sport might learn from the other's experiences to develop meaningful reforms"--Provided by publisher.

"The definitive account of the FIFA scandal, the biggest international corruption case of recent years, touching dozens of countries and spearheaded by U.S. investigators, published on the eve of the biggest sporting event on the planet, soccer's World Cup"-- The FIFA case began with an IRS agent's review of an American soccer official's tax returns. It led to a huge worldwide corruption scandal that crossed continents and reached the highest levels...

Drawing on Norbert Elias's work on the civilizing process, this book reviews aspects of sport in society through the ages, and develops a theory of leisure which encompasses sociological, psychological and biological perspectives.