Football is at the heart of British national identity. Through more than forty fascinating stories, Football Nation reveals the hidden and not-so-hidden history of the game since 1945. From the mass audiences of austerity Britain when footballers were amateurs through the arrival of the Premiership after the Hillsborough disaster to the present day when top-flight players command a higher weekly wage than the average spectator can earn in a year, Andrew Ward and John Williams reveal the truth about the national game as it once was and is today. Football Nation is informed, wryly amusing, often surprising and always vastly entertaining. It offers an entirely fresh perspective on the history of the beautiful game in Britain.
Andrew Ward is a freelance writer. His football books include Kicking and Screaming (with Rogan Taylor), Football Strangest Matches, Ward's Soccerpedia and Barnsley: A Study in Football, 1953-59 (with Ian Alister). He lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire. John Williams is an academic researcher and lecturer in the sociology of sport at the University of Leicester. He has pioneered football research since his studies of hooliganism in the late-1970s and has written twelve books on football and fan culture, the most recent being The Miracle of Istanbul (with Stephen Hopkins) and Groove Armada: Benitez, Anfield and the New Spanish Fury (with Ramon Llopis). He lives in Leicester.
Title: Football Nation: Sixty Years of the Beautiful Game
Author: Williams, John,Ward, Andrew
ISBN: 9781408801260
Binding:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publication Date: 2010-08-02
Number of Pages: 448
Weight: 0.3993 kg
'Fascinating and entertaining study ... As accounts of one sport's pivotal role in society go, this would be hard to beat' Irish Times 'As Ward and Williams clearly demonstrate ...while the English game is many things - brave, fair, violent, tragic, romantic, funny ... it is not pretty. And that, of course, is just the way we, and many millions around the world, like it' Daily Mail 'Genuinely fresh appraisals on all manner of topics, from the obvious to the not-so-obvious ... A treasure' Sports Journalists' Association 'A weighty tome on the development of football in the post-war Britain ... [it] reads like a companion volume to David Kynaston's magisterial popular history of the Attlee years, Austerity Britain' The Oldie