Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Football

Between 2012 and 2023, Ian Graham worked as Liverpool FC's Director of Research. His tenure coincided with the club’s greatest period of success since the 1980s, including winning the Premier League in 2020 – Liverpool’s first league title after an agonising 29 years. Here for the first time, Graham reveals the fascinating data that informed some of the club’s most pivotal moments of the past decade, from the appointment of Jurgen Klopp as manager in 2015 to the signing of Mohamed Salah in 2017.

How can one striker be better than three? Why do the best defenders never need to make a tackle? What's the secret of tiki-taka? Welcome to Ruud Gullit's master class on how to 'read' a match. From his unrivalled perspective as player, manager and pundit, the Dutch football legend shows us everything to look for in a 90 minute match. From formations and tactical decisions to player qualities and pivotal moments, Ruud Gullit unveils the hidden patterns on the pitch

It doesn't really matter who you support. Football is a cruel, cruel game. All of us fans have had moments of shock, disappointment, and feeling like a right knobhead. As I talk you through everything from transfers to trophies to touchline tantrums, join me as I give my definitive take on football. There's a lot to get through, so take my hand like an over-eager mascot and walk with me out of the tunnel into the glaring floodlights of what it means to be a fan…and how to survive it.

Jamie Vardy, the free-scoring talisman behind Leicester City's Premier League champion title, has become a modern against-the-odds footballing hero the world over. Rejected as a teenager by his boyhood club, Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie thought his chances had gone. But from playing pub football and earning £30 a week at Stocksbridge Park Steels while working in a factory, his impressive performances and hard work saw him rise again.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.A s a young boy, growing up in the Home Counties and watching his parents marriage fall apart, Nick Hornby had little sense of home. Then his dad took him to Highbury. Arsenals football ground would become the source of many of the strongest feelings he'd ever have: joy, humiliation, heartbreak, frustration, and hope.

In the decade since his mega-selling memoir I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he has played at Paris Saint-Germain (2012-2016), Manchester United (2016-2018), LA Galaxy (2018-2019) and Milan (2020-). This outrageous and hilarious follow-up is bursting with personal confessions and revealing anecdotes about the world's best players and managers. Packed with revelations, in Adrenaline, we hear for the first time what Zlatan really thinks about his time in the Premier League and what it was like to score that glorious bicycle kick against England.

Jürgen Klopp's super-sized personality and all-or-nothing style of football and management made him the perfect choice to pump up the volume at Anfield. The appointment sparked hysteria in the city, with fans and club officials delighted to get the coach they'd long admired from afar and eager to see the impact he would have. With exclusive access to Klopp's friends, family, colleagues and players, Raphael Honigstein goes behind-the-scenes at Liverpool, Mainz and Dortmund to tell the definitive story of Klopp's career.

Born to a Muslim father from Bosnia, and a Catholic mother from Croatia, Zlatan recounts his extraordinary life story, from his poverty-stricken upbringing as an immigrant in Malmö, Sweden, to becoming one of the world's most sought-after and expensive players, gracing Europe's finest clubs, from Ajax to Juventus, Internazionale to Barcelona, Milan to Paris Saint-Germain, and now Manchester United.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of My Story by Steven Gerrard, read Michael Ryan. Steven Gerrard is the former captain of Liverpool football team and of the England national football team and is the only player ever to have scored in a FA cup final, a league cup final, a UEFA cup final and a champion's league final. His entire career, since 1998, has been spent at Anfield with Liverpool.

Anfield, May 26th 1989. The final day of the Division One season. The rest of football stopped to watch as perennial champions Liverpool took on rank outsiders Arsenal in a head-to-head contest for the title. With the Gunners leading 1-0 but needing another goal to take the title, it was, in the words of commentator Brian Moore, ‘up for grabs now…’ Set against the backdrop of rgw Hillsborough disaster, and during an emotional era in football, 89 is an oral history of a sporting moment so unusual it felt instantly historic.

No player has been more synonymous with the glory years of Manchester United Football Club over the past two decades than right-back Gary Neville. An Old Trafford regular since he attended his first match at the age of six, captain of the brilliant 1992 FA Youth Cup-winning team that became known as 'Fergie's Fledglings', outspoken representative of MUFC, Neville is the ultimate one-club man. He has been at the heart of it all, and he is telling it all.

Why does an international footballer with the World at his feet decide to take his own life? On November 10, 2009, the German national goalkeeper Robert Enke stepped in front of a passing train. He was 32 years old. Viewed from the outside, Enke had it all. Here was a professional goalkeeper who had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Jose Mourinho's Benfica and Louis Van Gaal's Barcelona. Enke was destined to be his country's first choice for years. But beneath the veneer of success lay a darker story.

From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames.

Towering at six feet seven inches, Crouch is prized for his self-deprecating humour, having famously answered the question “what would you be if you weren’t a footballer?” with the one liner “a virgin”. At the same time, he has had an incredible career, from World Cups to Champions League finals. He has scored more headed goals than anyone else in Premiership history and has a better goals-to-minute on the pitch ratio for England than even Michael Owen. A humble professional with a great sense of humour, Crouch is one of the few players that is liked by fans of all clubs.

Jürgen Klopp is the charismatic German manager who single-handedly overthrew the accepted order in German football, taking Borussia Dortmund from nowhere to back-to-back Bundesliga titles and the Champions League final. He had long been admired in the Premiership and was finally wooed by Liverpool in the belief he could bring back the glory days to the Kop. Klopp is revered as a master tactician with his own unique playing philosophies.

On 13 July 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time: Germany forward Mario Götze, receiving a floated pass from his international teammate André Schürrle, jumps slightly to meet the ball and cushion it with his chest. Landing on his left foot, he takes a step with his right, swivels, and in one fluid motion, without the ball touching the ground, volleys it past the onrushing Argentine goalkeeper....

Who is Erik ten Hag? With an air of unperturbability, he ignores critics, follows his own methods and relentlessly pursues perfection on the pitch. His uncanny ability to analyse and solve problems—the 'process' as Ten Hag calls it—has unfailingly led to breakthrough. There is no magic. There is only intelligence at work, personal devotion to players and near-obsessive attention to detail. Maarten Meijer's definitive biography follows Erik ten Hag, from his upbringing in the Dutch countryside to his domestic triumphs and European victories.

What are the greatest football games ever played? Debated in every pub, stadium and dressing room up and down the country, everyone has their own opinion and their own memories of the beautiful game. Sharing his views on the greatest matches he has played in or enjoyed as a fan, Jamie Carragher takes listeners into the dressing room, on to the tour bus and out on to the pitch as he relives the defining moments of his playing career and the games that have shaped his relationship with the sport. 

"From kicking a ball as a kid under the street lamps of Poplar and standing on Highbury's North Bank with my dad, to my first game at West Ham, I was born head over heels in love with football. It saved me, and 50 years on that hasn't changed one bit - I'd be lost without it...." Harry is the manager who has seen it all - from from a dismal 70s Portakabin at Oxford City and training pitches with trees in the middle to the unbeatable highs of the Premiership, lifting the FA Cup and taking on Real Madrid in the Champions League.

Captain, father, leader, a fearless ambassador for the causes he believes in and a world-class midfielder, Jordan Henderson is all of these things—and it is why he is one of the most widely respected players of his generation. His story will go down in legend but his story also carries an inspirational message for anyone, showing hurdles and barriers won't stop you reaching your goals. In this, his first autobiography, Jordan reveals how an early love for the game as a kid became an all-consuming passion.