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Nonfiction Books » Sports, Games & Hobbies » Football (Soccer)

The Ball Is Round by David Goldblatt
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The Ball Is Round

by David Goldblatt

Recommendations from our site

“This book is incredible. I want to show you exactly how big it is. It’s enormous. It’s 1,000 pages, give or take. Huge. Heavy as a brick. It’s a global history of football and it really is as in-depth as that. The thing I love about it is the scale. He could have done a 300-page book on this that gave you a flavour of it and his publishers would probably have been happier about it. Easier to sell. But instead he has written the definitive history. Not just the games and the goals but what it means all over the world. God knows how long it took him or if he planned for it to be quite this all-encompassing when he started. It really is an incredible achievement.” Read more...

The best books on World Football

Steve Bloomfield, Journalist

“This book was published in 2006 in the UK and was sent to me. It’s about 1,000 pages long and the copy I got was a hardback and I remember the impact it made as it hit my doorstep. I think for a book on sport that’s unique, a book of that length. But, setting sport aside, I think it’s one of the best English-language narrative histories that I’ve read on any subject, certainly from the first decade of the 21st century. Goldblatt is an amazing, very gifted storyteller. He’s a football reporter for the BBC, and his work is a treasure, I think.” Read more...

The best books on Soccer as a Second Language

John Turnbull, Journalist

Other books by David Goldblatt

The Ball is Round by David Goldblatt

The Ball is Round
by David Goldblatt

Our most recommended books

  • Goalkeepers Are Different
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  • Football against the Enemy
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  • The Ball Is Round
    by David Goldblatt

  • Fever Pitch
    by Nick Hornby

  • All Played Out
    by Pete Davies

  • My Father and Other Working Class Football Heroes
    by Gary Imlach

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