Score with books on soccer

I suspect plenty of Americans, like me, only pay attention to professional soccer every four years during the World Cup!  Whether that describes you also, or whether you’re an all-time afficianado, there’s plenty at Snell Library to keep you informed and up-to-date. If you look to the foreign press for great coverage of professional soccer, try PressDisplay, which brings together World Cup headlines from South Africa, Canada, Italy, Mexico, and over 70 other countries.  And for all you coaches out there, subscribe to the RSS feed for  Soccer Journal from Ebsco, a bi-monthly magazine for coaches.  There are plenty of books about soccer skills and coaching at Snell Library, too. Like all games, soccer is cultural.  On the professional level, it’s political, too, and our book collections definitely reflect that. For example, just as World Cup soccer arrives in South Africa, a moving sidenote in apartheid’s history has just been published: More than just a game : soccer vs. apartheid by Chuck Korr with Marvin Close.  This is an inspiring story about inmates at Robben Island prison in South Africa in the 1960’s who formed a soccer league, and how it gave them dignity in the face of oppression and adversity. And if you’ve ever wondered how serious the nationalism around soccer can be, read  Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Soccer War which tells the story of the 1970 war between El Salvador and Honduras that was ignited by a soccer match, or the highly entertaining How Soccer explains the world by Franklin Foer about soccer, culture, and globalization.  Africa’s rise in the world of soccer is described in the timely African Soccerscapes. And Soccer Empire by Laurent Dubois profiles Zinedine Zidane, the French-Algerian soccer star, as a symbol of French imperialism both in his most glorious and his most tragic moments. Are you a parent of a soccer player or a former youth player?  Enjoy the insights into youth soccer culture in W.D. Wetherell’s  Soccer dad, or Nina Savin Scott’s practical Thinking kid’s guide to successful soccer (online from netlibrary).  Inspire your kids with the biography Young Pele or the mystical novel Keeper by Mal Peet , about a goalie and his supernatural mentor in the South American rain forest, both in the Favat children’s collection on the 2nd floor. Of course many at NU are interested primarily in the medical aspects of sports–including soccer–for those, there are books about soccer health and rehabilitation. Search for recent medical research in PubMed (customized for NU), SportDiscus and Medline. And if you just want to watch…see you in AfterHours, where all the matches are on the big screen!