Part 1 of this edition consists of the creation of the English football league in 1888. It includes every football league result and the final league tables to the first England International matches in the British Home International Championship results. It also provides the tables and their statistics with the first games against overseas opposition, containing all the players and their teams. Read about the oldest cup competition in the world, the Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup), from its humble beginning in 1872 and every result from the first round until the final. The book also incorporates the First World War mini-tournaments to the first FA Cup Final and England Internationals played at the World famous British Empire Stadium, simply known as Wembley Stadium. Part 1 finishes with the 1929-1930 football league season. Amaze your friends with the facts! For history buffs and true sportsmen, The History of the English Football League - Part 1: 1888-1930 is a must read.

The History of English Football Clubs is a comprehensive chronicle of the 133 football clubs to have played in English leagues over the last 150 years. From current Premier League juggernauts Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea to League Two minnows like Bradford (2013 FA Cup finalists) and AFC Wimbledon. Each club has a proud history of its own, not to mention a legion of passionate, usually lifelong fans. Among these 133 are 41 clubs that lost their league status in years past, realising their supporters' worst fears. In his lively and engaging voice, Shoot magazine editor Colin Mitchell tells the fascinating stories of these English sporting institutions. Text is illuminated by rare historical images, while statistics detail important achievements, players and events. This intriguing, inclusive book is a must read for any football fan, revealing the legends and legacies behind every English club, whether brave, beloved, beleaguered or forgotten.

A fascinating insight the formation of the Football League, including the discovery of who really scored the first-ever League goal.

The English Premier League (EPL) is one of the world’s most valuable and high-profile sports leagues, with millions of fans around the globe. The 2016/17 season marked the 25th anniversary of the EPL, providing a unique opportunity to reflect on how it has contributed, both positively and negatively, to key developments in football – and in sport and culture more broadly – at local, national and global levels. Drawing on central themes in the social scientific study of sport, such as globalisation, celebrity, fandom, commercialisation, gender, sexuality and race, this book is the first to assess the historical development and current significance of the EPL. With original contributions from several of the world’s leading football scholars, it provides in-depth case studies of the multifaceted role of the EPL in the contemporary world of sport, as well as offering thought-provoking predications for the future challenges that it will face. The English Premier League: A Socio-Cultural Analysis is a fascinating read for any sport studies student or scholar with a particular interest in football and the sociology of sport.

Two veteran sports writers and editors take readers inside the history of the most-watched sports league on earth -- England's Premier League.

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of soccer and contemporary Britain. Soccer in the United Kingdom has evolved from a jaded, working-class tradition to a sport at the heart of popular culture, from an economic mess to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. The changes in the game, David Goldblatt shows, uncannily mirror the evolution of British society. In the 1980s, soccer was described as a slum game played by slum people in slum stadiums. Such was the transformation over the following twenty-five years that novelists, politicians, poets, and bankers were all declaring their footballing loyalties. At one point, the Palace let it be known that the queen -- like her mother, Prince Harry, the chief rabbi, and the archbishop of Canterbury -- was an Arsenal fan. Soccer permeated the national life like little else, an atavistic survivor decked out in New Britain flash, a social democratic game in a cutthroat, profit-driven world. From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League (EPL) was forged in Margaret Thatcher's Britain by an alliance of the big clubs -- Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur -- the Football Association, and Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV. Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon traces the momentous economic, social, and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL -- the most popular soccer league in the world.

The Premier League transformed the violent terrace culture of the 1970s and 1980s into sophisticated sporting theatre with a global audience of billions. Sports writer Jim White has chosen ten epic clashes to represent the rise and rise of English football's top flight, evoking the sweat and effort of the matches in thrilling detail. White profiles players, managers and owners; charts the ebb and flow of club fortunes in footballing and fiscal terms; and brings to life the turning-points and moments of drama, joy and despair that have punctuated the first 21 years of global football's most watched league.