History of football

[danielmak]

I'm in the process of slowly catching up on some issues of WSC that piled up during times when I was too busy with work to keep up. There is a review in the January 2013 issue (#311) of a collection edited by Paul Brown called Goal-Post, which is an anthology of Victorian football writing. Titford provides a generally positive review of this book that seems to compile articles from the 1800s about football. I don't think this is something that would float my boat, but Titford mentions two chapters that sound intriguing: one about a reporter traveling away with a team and another about what it was like to be in the first ever floodlit crowd in 1878.

https://tomkinstimes.com/2013/07/spo...th-paul-brown/

[Antepli Ejderha]

The Ball is Round, by David Goldblatt is very good, from what I remember reading it several years ago. Indeed I can send you a spare copy I have if you want to just pay for post..... post will be blooming expensive mind, it's a brick of a book

I'd also recommend this and the Jonathan Wilson book on tactics.

Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos is pretty good, even if it is Brazil only.

[seand]

The Ball is Round, by David Goldblatt is very good, from what I remember reading it several years ago. Indeed I can send you a spare copy I have if you want to just pay for post..... post will be blooming expensive mind, it's a brick of a book

[Muukalainen]

Thanks everyone for your recommendations, much appreciated.

[caja-dglh]

That David Squires book touches on this stuff, doesn't it?

[elguapo4]

Beastly Fury by Richard Saunders is an excellent history of football from the start of the 19th century to the 1920s. If you're interested in the history of Gaelic Football then The GAA a people's history by Paul Rouse is the best history of the organisation that I've read.

[Sits]

Once past the code splits, I really enjoyed Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid as an evolution of (association) football tactics.

[ale]

The Code War by Graham Williams -Yore Publications 1994. The stated aim of the author is describe the history of Football & does so for each of the 3 codes to outbreak WW1 & in doing so establishes how Association became the pre-eminent code.

Used copy available ?4 (plus P &P) on Amazon marketplace

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

How Football Began by Tony Collins might be what you're looking for - I'd expect you'd find a used copy on abebooks.co.uk for a few quid

[Muukalainen]

Can anyone recommend a book or some books that give in depth details of the development of football over the years? I'm not too bothered about the details of any particular team, rather what was played even centuries ago, through to how the different codes (association, rugby union and league, Gaelic, aussie rules, American, etc.) have developed over time.