"A few years ago, it would have been a brave man who bet on Jamie Vardy becoming one of the most feared strikers in football. Too small to play, too slight to mix it, earning so little that he was being forced out of the game he loved, the odds could not have been longer. In 2007, Vardy was playing non-League football at Stocksbridge Park Steels, earning GBP30 per game and supplementing it with a factory job so dire that his back almost gave out. Having been released by Sheffield Wednesday as a teenager, the indignity was compounded as Vardy was forced to wear an electronic tag after an assault outside a pub. He would frequently have to ask to be substituted and run home to avoid breaking his curfew. A lesser man would have been broken. Eight years later, after a meteoric rise through the football ranks, Jamie Vardy squared his shoulders against all the naysayers and set the Premier League on fire. By the time Christmas of 2015 rolled around, he had scored in 11 consecutive games for Leicester City, breaking Manchester United's Ruud van Nistelrooy's twelve year old record in the process. In The Boy From Nowhere, bestselling sports writer Frank Worrall traces how Jamie Vardy went from playing in a muddy field in Sheffield to being signed by the Foxes for a non-league record of GBP1 million, winning the Championship and terrorising Premier League defences in the process. A real-life rags-to-riches tale that every boy up and down the country dreams of, this is the incredible true story of Jamie Vardy, the boy who came from nowhere to the very top."--Publisher's description.

'Very funny on almost every page, wonderfully self-deprecating and very sharp on the ludicrous behaviour of the modern player' - Sunday Times 'The funniest man in British sport' - Metro **A Sunday Times Sports Book of the Year** **Shortlisted for the National Book Awards** **Longlisted for the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Autobiography of the Year** You become a footballer because you love football. And then you are a footballer, and you're suddenly in the strangest, most baffling world of all. A world where one team-mate comes to training in a bright red suit with matching top-hat, cane and glasses, without any actual glass in them, and another has so many sports cars they forget they have left a Porsche at the train station. Even when their surname is incorporated in the registration plate. So walk with me into the dressing-room, to find out which players refuse to touch a football before a game, to discover why a load of millionaires never have any shower-gel, and to hear what Cristiano Ronaldo says when he looks at himself in the mirror. We will go into post-match interviews, make fools of ourselves on social media and try to ensure that we never again pay £250 for a haircut that should have cost a tenner. We'll be coached and cajoled by Harry Redknapp, upset Rafa Benitez and be soothed by the sound of an accordion played by Sven-Goran Eriksson's assistant Tord Grip. There will be some very bad music and some very bad decisions. I am Peter Crouch. This is How To Be A Footballer. Shall we?

"The odds of the Foxes winning the Premier League at the start of the season were the same as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster being proven to exist, Christmas being the warmest day of the year in England or Barack Obama playing cricket for England after he left the Oval Office." -- ESPN On March 21, 2015, Leicester City lost their sixth game in eight matches. Without a victory for two months, they were rock bottom of the English Premier League, heading for certain relegation to the lower division, and about to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime financial bonanza of TV money and opportunity. As usual, London and Manchester would clean up, the rich would get richer, and the hopes of the small, overlooked, multicultural city would sink. But Leicester started to win. They stayed up; and in the new season they kept on winning. Favorites for relegation, rank outsiders as potential champions (their 5000 -- 1 odds were the longest in the world for any major sporting event), their entire squad had been assembled for less than the cost of a single player for Manchester City. Still, they beat Manchester City and Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea: the most incredible cast of written-offs, grafters, misfits, and journeymen came together for the season of their lives. This is the story every underdog dreams of, every small town with a much larger, more affluent neighbor hopes for, and a triumph that defies logic and expectation.

The story of one of the most recognisable and successful players in world football. Didier Drogba is renowned for his heading ability, sharp shooting and sheer strength. He has played for his native Ivory Coast and for clubs in France, China and Turkey, but it is as a Chelsea striker that he is best known. His feats with Chelsea have made him a cult hero among supporters. In Didier Drogba's honest and revealing autobiography he will talk about life as an immigrant in Paris, the importance of his education and how finding success later than most professional footballers has kept him grounded. In 2012 Didier was voted Chelsea's greatest ever player. He talks from a privileged behind-the-scenes position about tactics and how he felt mentally and physically as well as anecdotes from the dressing room. Didier provides unique insight into important and controversial matches from the first trophy he won with them in 2005 to the Premier League title a decade later; as well as what persuaded him to stay when he was at his lowest ebb. Away from football Drogba has been widely applauded for his involvement in trying to broker peace in the Ivorian civil war - he is a UN Goodwill Ambassador and does a huge amount of work with the Didier Drogba Foundation - Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. Go behind the scenes at Stamford Bridge and find out about life on and off the field for this humble Chelsea hero.

Paul Gambaccini chose to live in Britain, arriving here at the age of 21 from his home in the United States. He won a scholarship to Oxford, and wanted to escape the administration of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Imagine his disappointment when his chosen country betrayed, psychologically tortured and abandoned him. Arrested on risible accusations of historic child sex abuse, he was disgraced in the press and made unemployable, having to pay tens of thousands of pounds in legal fees during a year in which he had no income. Finally, inevitably, he became the latest celebrity to be completely exonerated, the allegations completely thrown out. 'Love, Paul Gambaccini' is a first person account of the witch hunt Gambaccini endured at the hands of the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service.

Luka Modric tells the story of his journey from a childhood in his war-torn homeland to becoming a serial UEFA Champions League winner and one of the most celebrated footballers in the world

Almost as soon as Gazza burst on to the scene at Newcastle United, the young Geordie was the centre of attention: Vinnie Jones's notorious ball-handling showed the lengths people would go to try to stop him. Then, with England on the verge of possibly reaching the World Cup final in 1990, came Gazza's tears - the moment that brought a whole new audience to the sport and helped set the football boom of the 1990s on its way. But then came a career-threatening injury, mental health problems, self-confessed alcoholism and family disputes, as life in the full glare of the media spotlight became too much. Now, at the end of his top-flight playing career, Gazza is ready to confront his demons. The result is quite simply the most remarkable footballing story you'll ever read: what it's like being Paul Gascoigne, in his own words.