CLUB SOCCER 101: The Essential Guide to the Stars, Stats, and Stories of 101 of the Greatest Teams in the World - Softcover

"All the classic stories are here [as well as] lesser-known tidbits... Dempsey's prose is a nice mix of flavorful sports-reporting and poetic impressions... Enjoyable and informative." "Succeeds wildly... Dempsey packs a surprising amount of history and information into the scant few pages allotted for each of the teams, a testament to his knowledge and tenacity... [R]eaders even remotely interested in soccer will have a difficult time putting it down." -- Douglas Lord "Luke Dempsey is one of the funniest, most charming narrative companions I know. This book is the perfect vessel for his genius and one of the world's great reference books. I will keep it next to my television, so that I will have a wholesome way to kill halftimes." -- Franklin Foer, bestselling author of How Soccer Explains the World "Built on a vault of detail that will impress soccer aficionados, supplying choice cuts of thinking, anecdote and history that can be used to impress when waxing authoritatively on the game...[It's] free from sentimentality, and crafted with a sharp wit." -- Alan Black

Written with verve from a passionate fan's perspective, Club Soccer 101 is the essential guide to the 101 most talked about football teams in the world-from renowned powerhouses like Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Boca Juniors, Liverpool, Manchester United, A.C. Milan and Real Madrid to rising teams like the Los Angeles Galaxy. The book features you-were-there stories of each team's greatest games, historic moments of glory and disappointment and most famous (and infamous) players-from Pele, Maradona and George Best to Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo. The book also includes statistics for both the casual and the die-hard fan. Club Soccer 101 is an authoritative, opinionated and fun-to-read guide to the world's favourite sport.