DAVID GOLDBLATT

This is a definitive history of global football.

The Olympics is the world's biggest sporting event - and it moves centre stage for London 2012. Yet the sports the world is familiar with - football, cricket, rugby - are either missing or have a token presence. This book offers the back story behind each Olympics sport and, by means of diagrams and prose, explains the rules and finer points. This is the one book on the Olympics you really do need. The Olympics is the world's biggest sporting event - and it moves centre stage for London 2012. Yet the sports the world is familiar with - football, cricket, rugby, baseball, motor sports - are either missing or have a token presence. In their place are games that most of us have not a clue how to play or to watch. Which is where this witty, insightful book comes into play, offering the back story behind each Olympics sport and, by means of fiendishly clever diagrams and prose, explaining the rules and finer points. Once you've read David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton's accounts, you'll be on tenterhooks to see whether the Danish or the Koreans triumph at handball, just what the Italian fencers are up to, and if Greco-Roman wrestling really is like a game of chess.

David Goldblatt is possibly the best football historian there has ever been Dominic Sandbrook David Goldblatt is the greatest British sportswriter of the 21st century Injury Time is an absolute classic James Montague author of The Billionaires Club and EngulfedFootball history and the state of the nation and why it mattersInjury Time is a sharp and thought provoking look at contemporary British society through the lens of football a society shaken by more than a decade of economic political and social upheaval whose causes and consequences have proved hard to grasp Set against the backdrop of Brexit Covid and today s polycrisis spanning economic decline war in Europe political unrest and climate change this book argues that football provides an unmatched vantage point for understanding the nation s state of affairs From grassroots clubs battling for survival to the rise and fall of Russian oligarchs in the sport the game s tragedies and triumphs echo the larger shifts shaping Britain With striking examples such as Marcus Rashford s anti hunger campaign and the uproar surrounding Gary Lineker s tweets Injury Time underscores football s central role in public conversation Football Goldblatt contends is the ultimate societal bellwether a refl