The World Cup kicks off tomorrow in Brazil and we’ve pulled together just a small number of the e-books currently available to staff and students of the University in the Library’s collections that look at different aspects of the beautiful (or not so beautiful) game.

The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age by Peter Millward addresses the themes that have come to define the global flow of images, capital and people that exist in contemporary football today, including case studies on Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City football clubs.

Foreign Players and Football Supporters: The Old Firm, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain by David Ranc looks at supporters’ reactions to the increase in the number of foreign players in the clubs they support. It concentrates on three case studies on Glasgow (Celtic and Rangers), Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in London and the book charts the evolution of the link between supporters and club between 1995 and today.

Organisation and Governance of Top Football Across Europe : An Institutional Perspective aims to provide an extensive overview of how football is organised and managed on a European level and in individual European countries, and to account for the evolution of the national, international and transnational management of football over the last decades.

Football’s Dark Side: Corruption, Homophobia, Violence and Racism in the Beautiful Game by Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland aims to express the views of thousands of football fans on the game they love, but which they know has an unpleasant underside demonstrating that beyond  football’s assumed social value, the glamour and the spectacle an array of serious problems and exclusions endure.

An ethnography of English football fans: Cans, cops and carnivals by Geoff Pearson is based upon sixteen years observation of English football fans who travel home and away with their team – Manchester United, Blackpool and the England national team. The book challenges a number of the myths about hooliganism and crowd control and describes the interpretations, motivations and behaviour of these groups of fans both at home and abroad.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science