Wanting to be a striker like her grandpa was, Keisha jumps into soccer practice with both feet and, unfortunately, both hands. She's afraid her habit of catching the ball will end her sports dream, but Coach has a new game plan.

Soccer Dreams weaves together a fictional tale about a boy from Kenya who moves to Seattle and helps his soccer coach build a winning team, with real-life strategy and teamwork tips from the current MLS Seattle Sounders FC. The book includes profiles and full-color photographs of the Sounders FC players, along with black-and-white illustrations of the story.

Go for the Goal! World Cup–winning soccer player Julie Ertz inspires kids to lead a life of faith and virtue as she shares her own stories and the lessons she has learned in childhood and now in her illustrious playing career. Each chapter focuses on a character trait essential to success on and off the playing field. Children will discover the value of sacrifice, hard work, and having a good attitude. They will gain a trusted mentor in Julie, who encourages them through personal examples to be winners in life. Packed with engaging photos and filled with timely wisdom and biblical truth for tweens, this book will help boys and girls chase their dreams with passion and purpose.

The world’s most popular sport, soccer is a global and cultural phenomenon. The television audience for the 2010 World Cup included nearly half of the world’s population, with viewers in nearly every country. As a reflection of soccer’s significance, the sport impacts countless aspects of the world’s culture, from politics and religion to business and the arts. In The World through Soccer: The Cultural Impact of a Global Sport, Tamir Bar-On utilizes soccer to provide insights into worldwide politics, religion, ethics, marketing, business, leadership, philosophy, and the arts. Bar-On examines the ways in which soccer influences and reflects these aspects of society, and vice versa. Each chapter features representative players, providing specific examples of how soccer comments on and informs our lives. These players—selected from a wide array of eras, countries, and backgrounds—include Diego Maradona, Pelé, Hugo Sánchez, Cha Bum-Kun, Roger Milla, José Luis Chilavert, Zinedine Zidane, Paolo Maldini, Cristiano Ronaldo, Xavi, Neymar, Clint Dempsey, Mia Hamm, and many others. Employing a unique lens to view a variety of topics, The World through Soccer reveals the sport’s profound cultural impact. Combining philosophical, popular, and academic insights about our world, this book is aimed at both soccer fans and academics, offering readers a new perspective into a sport that affects millions.

Winners of 8 national championships, Indiana University is to men’s college soccer what University of North Carolina is to college basketball or University of Notre Dame is to college football. To Chase a Dream is the true story of one kid’s near-impossible desire to play soccer at that national powerhouse, a kid who was told time after time that he simply wasn’t good enough and never would be. What all the doubters failed to consider was that inside the body of an under-sized, humble Paul Kapsalis was the heart of a lion. This is his journey, a story that affirms that perseverance, optimism, hard work, a willingness to learn, and kindness can lead to remarkable achievements and transform a kid who just wanted to play soccer into a leader of men. It took him 5 years, fighting through rejection and a career-threatening injury, but Paul got where he never expected to go. Here’s a chance to see how he did it.

In Soccer Without Borders, journalist Erik Kirschbaum lays out Klinsmann's vision for making the U.S. men's soccer team a dominant world power for the first time in its history. Featuring fascinating insights gleaned from Klinsmann's decades of dedicated study - both as a professional striker and as coach of the German national team - this book is an immersive and unparalleled road map for how to build a winning team in the most competitive professional sport on the globe.

The American Dream is founded upon the ideological belief that ‘you can be anything you want to be’, regardless of your current class position, and is one of the most emotive, pervasive and ideologically embedded concepts championed by American citizens. Providing contemporary insight into the American Dream via the critical lens of soccer – the world’s pre-eminent sport but still a minority interest in the US – this book challenges the notion that America is different, exceptional or unique in the global order, either in real socio-economic-political terms or in perceived cultural terms. Soccer and the American Dream offers an overview of soccer in the US and uses case studies to explore the motives of American university students in undertaking a soccer scholarship, considering the impact of family, social class and career development upon social mobility and upon the game itself. Providing a fascinating new insight into the nexus of sport, education, culture and society, this is a topical resource for students, scholars and practitioners across the fields of soccer, higher education, youth sport, sports development, sports coaching and sport management.