I’m always researching the game, so this is a page of the few soccer books that I recommend are worth your time. I may not update this page very often, but when I do, you’ll know I’ve restricted it to the best.
Books On Soccer Managers
Pep Confidential, by Martí Perarnau
Often, when otherwise respectable journalists get access to huge names, they super compensate for the privilege by writing bizarre, sycophantic tributes. This isn’t one of those books.
The quality I like most in this book is Perarnau’s sensitivity to the details of being a sportsman. He competed in the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow and the result is an unprecedented (in my opinion) interest in the specifics of physical, mental, nutritional and tactical preparation.
Pep Confidential in an insider’s look at Guardiola’s first season in charge at Bayern Munich, during which time the Bavarian club won the domestic league and cup double.
Buy Pep Confidential on Amazon (US) or Amazon.co.uk
Books On Soccer Performance
The Mindful Athlete, George Mumford
Maybe this book doesn’t mention soccer even once, but anyone who plays any sport should read it. It’s about one man’s fall from promising college basketball player to also ran who had to retire because of a knee injury. His medication for the pain took him down a slippery slope of addiction, to heroin and almost death.
The comeback story is something extraordinary. Sensing his fate, Mumford enrols in a mindfulness programme. With a new mental strength, he is able to beat addiction, get a psychology degree and start teaching mindfulness meditation to others.
His own teacher recommends him to the Chicago Bulls as an instructor. Now, elite players such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Andrew Bynum all credit Mumford with helping them to compete at the very top of elite basketball with techniques that you can learn too.
Buy The Mindful Athlete on Amazon.com (US) or Amazon.co.uk
Books On Soccer Clubs
Barça: A People’s Passion, Jimmy Burns
The deepest of dives into Barcelona’s evolution as a political and sociological phenomenon. You might know every member of the current squad by sight, but if you can’t hold a conversation about the importance of Samitier, Kubala, Koeman and Stoichkov, you’ll soon get found out.
Buy Barça: A People’s Passion on Amazon.com (US) or Amazon.co.uk
Books On Soccer Tactics
Inverting The Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson
As its subtitle boasts, this is ‘The History Of Football Tactics’. No informed student of the game may enter a tactical conversation without a read of Wilson’s authoritative historical tour. It stretches from the 1-2-7 of the 19th Century through to the present day. It’s fascinating to learn where the key innovations in tactical history have been and it’ll give you a 10X appreciation of any 90 minutes you watch from now on.
I haven’t read the very latest version of the book, but it would be a shame for Wilson to update it without including the work Pep Guardiola has done with goalkeepers and full backs in recent years (writing in Sep 2016).
Buy Inverting The Pyramid on Amazon.com (US) or Amazon.co.uk