This Is Football: The Beautiful Game

A celebration of the timeless beauty of soccer--its greatest and most stylish players, from past heroes to today’s stars, along with its hallowed grounds.

Football, or soccer as it’s known in the US, has been around for more than two hundred years and in some ways remains largely unchanged. It is the timelessness of the game that is celebrated in This Is Football.
Lavishly illustrated with striking images of on-field action as well as candid dressing-room moments taken by some of the most respected photographers in sport, the book serves as both a primer and a nostalgic love letter to the beauty of the game.

Readers will venture on a journey to South America, where football became beautiful in the 1960s, and to Spain, where tiki-taka revolutionised the game in the 1980s. From Dennis Bergkamp’s sublime control and finish against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup to Sergio Agüero’s last-minute strike of the 2010/11 season--winning Manchester City their first Premier League title, This Is Football captures many of the game’s most extraordinary events and players.

Organised by player position, each chapter highlights some of the biggest names to have graced the pitch, from Pelé to David Beckham and Mia Hamm to Marta, as well as historic moments they helped create. Featuring phenomenal goals, inspired midfield play, heroic defending, and eye-catchingly colourful goalkeeping, this book illustrates why soccer is the most popular sport in the world and why it is truly loved by so many.

Daniel Melamud is the award-winning author of This Is Cricket: In the Spirit of the Game (2021 Wisden Book of the Year and 2021 Telegraph Sports Book Awards Illustrated Book of the Year) and Pulisic: My Journey So Far (2022 Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year award winner and shortlisted in the 2023 Sunday Times Sports Book Awards). Robbie Earle MBE is an English-born Jamaican former international soccer player who is a presenter for NBC Sports’ coverage of the Premier League. Christian Pulisic is an American soccer player who plays for AC Milan and the United States national team.