Soccer Lover’s Best Ever Soccer Book Guide
This series will review and rate books that teach, describe and document the beautiful game. Look for a wide variety of books and helpful insight from players who have been there and done it on the pitch. Here is something different than our usual reviews on soccer coaching books, Beyond Bend It Like Beckham is a highly relevant look at the global phenomenon of women’s soccer.
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FIVE STAR RATING
By Timothy F. Grainey, a well known sports journalist who has written extensively on soccer for World Football Pages, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Soccer365.com, Equalizersoccer.com, and TheGlobalGame.com.
Beyond Bend It Like Beckham – the Global Phenomenon of Women’s Soccer is an entertaining, easy read filled with facts on the better half of soccer. Exploring the dramatic ups and downs of the women’s game in America and around the globe, Beyond Bend It Like Beckham is a journey into the triumphs of success and tragedy of failure in women’s soccer. Timelier than ever as America ponders what do to without an official Professional Women’s League, this book explains the twisted road to the present and offers insight for a better, more sustainable future.
Personally, I found the book marvelous, insightful and entertaining. More of a journey into the past than a dry documentary, this book offers intelligence and light on a subject that is often riddled with agendas and clad in colorless mundane confusion.
Women’s soccer in the United States often seems to suffer the plight of second class citizenship, which clearly is wrong. After all, who took America to the 2012 Olympics? The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.
According to the publisher: Though it burst into public consciousness only with the 1999 World Cup, women’s soccer has been around almost as long as its male counterpart, flourishing in England during and after World War I. From the rise of women’s soccer following Title IX legislation in the early seventies to the watershed 1999 World Cup performance that turned the American team into instant celebrities, soccer is now the most popular sport for girls and women, with participation growing exponentially worldwide. Beyond “Bend It Like Beckham” presents the first in-depth global analysis of the women’s game—both where it has come from and where it is headed. With commentary from key players, coaches, and administrators, Timothy F. Grainey follows the sport’s reach into the unlikeliest places today, even countries where women were banned from playing soccer just a few short years ago.
Though women in the United States and Canada still fight for equal treatment and funding, their situations differs markedly from the hostility, abuse, and even outright bans that some women still encounter in trying to pursue an activity they love. Through the prism of soccer, this book explores the struggle for women’s rights abroad, in countries as diverse as Sweden, Russia, South Africa, Pakistan, Australia, and Iran.
