88 Books Like Black and Blue

This is an important book for me personally and for football more broadly. I met Justin Fashanu when I was a kid and got his autograph as he was a hero of mine. His story, vividly told in this thoroughly researched biography, is ultimately sad.

Fashanu, the first openly gay player in English football, became a star and an early Black footballing icon at Norwich City in the late 70s/early 80s. However, after a big-money move to Nottingham Forest, his life gradually unraveled and ended in tragedy.

The book details this downward spiral, which makes it a harrowing read but a vital one as it reveals so much about attitudes towards gay players in a bygone era that sadly still resonates today.

Women’s experiences of football have been under-researched, making this collection of essays all the more significant. The recent explosion in the popularity of women’s football sometimes masks the fact that women have been playing the game for many decades–it’s just that the (male) world has finally caught up with how good they are at it.

This multifaceted book, which contains chapters written solely by women, is a sometimes amusing and often insightful take on the women’s game and women’s involvement in all aspects of football. It’s also written with a warmth that I really like and an intelligence sharper than a defense-splitting Lauren Hemp pass.

I found this an enlightening read about an issue that I thought I knew well. Football has made significant progress in highlighting and tackling bigotry and discrimination in the game over the last 30 years or so.

However, this edited volume reminds us that there is still a long way to go. It’s an academic work that contains chapters covering many aspects of hate crime and how they manifest themselves on matchdays, in the boardroom, and online.

I learned a lot from this volume, and I feel it should be compulsory reading for anyone responsible for running the contemporary game.

This book resonated with me in a way that autobiographies rarely do. It’s not strictly a football book per se but a vividly-written tale of a white, working-class lad, Stuart Deabill, who grew up in the 70s and 80s worshipping the ‘holy trinity’ (as he calls it) of football, clothes, and music. 

The book charts how these three elements interweave in Deabill’s life, just as they have in the lives of countless others. It reveals that what he listened to and what he wore on a matchday were as vitally important as the actual game itself. This is a brilliant, self-effacing, and funny book that portrays an aspect of football culture often not understood by the media.

I found this book very informative when I started researching my book on the Ultras fans in Egypt. It is an in-depth look at the football history in the Middle East and North African region. 

The author, James Dorsey, has real-life experiences of Cairo and other places in the region when he worked as a journalist for decades before turning to his attention to soccer. This book grew out of a blog of the same name with a wide readership and this is the most significant book on the football politics available. The section on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood comes from an expert’s eye as he picks up the details and explains the situation to the reader. The book is a journey around the troubled landscape of the Middle East to discover the mix of history, cultures, and politics of the Arab world through soccer.

At 1,012 pages, this is certainly not for the faint-hearted, but it remains the most amazing football book I’ve ever read. It is unrivaled in its scope, with chapters focusing on every continent, even those for which soccer may not have fully won the public over (like the USA). 

Much more than a chronicle of who scored where and when, it is also a book about politics and society and the wider forces that shape football. The Ball is Round can be dipped into with the chapters you find more interesting, but I find it more rewarding to tackle from start to finish. It will take some time, but the joy is in the journey, not the destination.

A footballing reading rite of passage, our version of The Power Broker.

How could I be a sports physicist and know next to nothing about soccer, the world’s most popular sport? After a student wanted to research soccer physics with me, I knew I had to get up to speed on the beautiful game. Wesson’s book was my choice, and it was a smart choice! From the simple, like the bounce of the ball, to the complex, like the flight of the ball during a free kick, Wesson touches on all the important aspects of soccer.

Anyone can read the book, and for those of us who yearn for the mathematical details, Wesson’s last chapter does not disappoint.

This heartwarming novel is full of soccer, touching family dynamics, and girl power. It stars a feisty sixth-grader named Bea who has to adjust to a new house, a new school, a new blended family, and a new neighbor who’s gunning for her position on the soccer field. At first, Bea is determined to look out for herself and protect her turf, but then she and her neighbor team up to fight against sexism and form the first-ever all-girls squad. The team dynamics in this book will make any reader cheer. Soccer fans will love the on-field action, but this gem of a novel also has humor, emotional depth, delightful and inspiring characters, and even references to the beloved Katherine Paterson novel Bridge to Terabithia!

I spent many years of my youth flicking through history books on the World Cup and learning about legends like Beckenbauer and Cruyff, Pele, and Maradona, and have always been obsessed with the greatest event in sport. This book tells the definitive story of every event from Uruguay in 1930 up to Russia in 2018. 

Glanville’s style brings out the unique nature of every tournament and the teams, players, and coaches within them, making it much more than a series of brief match reports, which can be a challenge in chronological histories.

A rough-and-tumble gaggle of middle-schoolers on the C-string girl's soccer team navigate first crushes, coming out, queer identity, and relationships – and being really, really bad at soccer. Johnson’s perfect ear for tween voices is matched by a frenetic art style that pops with crisp energy and a delirious, bouncy pace that rebounds around its panoply of League Of Their Own-esque characters like a soccer ball zig-zagging across its field. All the cheers, all the skinned knees, all the dizzying emotions and close friendships of the tween years come rushing back.