Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe. The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession. The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general.

She's about to make a deal with the college bad boy... Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice...even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date. ...and it's going to be oh so good All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.

A girl tells what it's like to be the daughter of a college football coach. Always on the move, always changing friends. About the only constant part is her religion. Eight moves later she is finally around long enough to have a romance with a boyfriend.

Barcelona’s new soccer star is receiving death threats and Pepe Carvalho, gourmet gumshoe and former political prisoner under Franco, is hired to find out who’s behind it. Pepe Carvalho is set to retire. Content to live out the rest of his days enjoying the best food and wine Catalonia has to offer, his plans are put on hold when an executive from Barcelona's world-famous soccer team pays him a visit. “The center forward will be killed at dusk,” reads the note the executive gives to Carvalho. With that, the detective, former communist, and one-time employee of the CIA, must find out where this note is from. Is the threat real? Is it the work of one person? Or is it one of the real estate moguls tearing Barcelona apart in their battle over the most important properties of Catalonia? Here Montalbán does for the game of soccer what he has done for food. In an exquisite portrait of Spain’s most beloved sport, soccer and politics mix in a gripping mystery about the reckless excesses—and limits—of power.

When cheerleader Layla unknowingly sends Tyler, a football player, a confrontational text meant for someone else, they end up texting each other without knowing who the other really is. But as days and weeks pass, things take a turn for the serious between them, and suddenly, their texts mean more. Can reality live up to the fantasy, or will Layla and Tyler be forever offsides?

The women you've seen play today, we are more than football players, more than athletes and sportspeople of the very highest degree. We are heroines or heroes - or however you wanna say it – and we should be taking our place on posters and platforms and TV stations, changing the way perfect is thought of, changing the way girls can be brought up. Offside tells the story of women's football in the UK through the eyes of a modern professional female footballer as she seeks to find a future in the game through exploring its past. Mickey is alone in the locker room; she deliberates with herself about the biggest decision of her life, her career, her love – her football. But in a world where sexism is rife and a feeling of self-limitation reduces opportunities, fear makes for poor decisions while joy flourishes in the unlikeliest of places. Offside has been researched with top women's teams, Manchester City Women's FC and Millwall Lionesses, where many players, sports scientists and others who are integral to the development of the game have been interviewed to gain an in-depth insight into their world. The play blends a dramatic narrative with performance poetry and chanting to evoke the pace and passion of the women's game. The production, by Futures Theatre, has been developed in partnership with the National Football Museum, Manchester, and the IWM, London.

Fifteen-year-old Cal Deane has a chance to make it as a professional footballer. To get there, he'll have to cope with the loss of his mum and a group of racists. For Cal, the battles off the pitch are far more challenging than any game of football.