If You Love ‘Ted Lasso’, You Will Love These Books Even More

*As seen on  Apple TV+ 'Ted Lasso'

Inverting the Pyramid is a pioneering soccer book that chronicles the evolution of soccer tactics and the lives of the itinerant coaching geniuses who have spread their distinctive styles across the globe.

Inverting the Pyramid provides a definitive understanding of the tactical genius of modern-day Barcelona, for the first time showing how their style of play developed from Dutch “Total Football,” which itself was an evolution of the Scottish passing game invented by Queens Park in the 1870s and taken on by Tottenham Hotspur in the 1930s. Inverting the Pyramid has been called the “Big Daddy” (Zonal Marking) of soccer tactics books; it is essential for any coach, fan, player, or fantasy manager of the beautiful game.

A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB YA PICK

In Rosario, Argentina, Camila Hassan lives a double life. 
At home, she is a careful daughter, living within her mother’s narrow expectations, in her rising-soccer-star brother’s shadow, and under the abusive rule of her short-tempered father.

On the field, she is La Furia, a powerhouse of skill and talent. When her team qualifies for the South American tournament, Camila gets the chance to see just how far those talents can take her. In her wildest dreams, she’d get an athletic scholarship to a North American university.

But the path ahead isn’t easy. Her parents don’t know about her passion. They wouldn’t allow a girl to play fútbol—and she needs their permission to go any farther. And the boy she once loved is back in town. Since he left, Diego has become an international star, playing in Italy for the renowned team Juventus. Camila doesn’t have time to be distracted by her feelings for him. As her life becomes more complicated, Camila is forced to face her secrets and make her way in a world with no place for the dreams and ambition of a girl like her.

Jurgen Klopp’s coaching career began in the German second tier at the unfashionable club of FSV Mainz 05, whom he steered to the Bundesliga for the first time in forty-one years. In 2008, he joined Borussia Dortmund, where he achieved back-to-back league titles and took the club to the UEFA Champions League final. He left Germany for one of the England’s most challenging jobs: to manage Liverpool, a once-mighty club that had not managed sustained success since the 1980s.

It was not a task for the fainthearted. Anfield, Liverpool’s home, is a temple to flamboyant attacking soccer powered by passion. In Klopp, Liverpool finally found a manager who embodied the essence of the club. Klopp is dynamic, expressive, restless, driven-he feels every move and play, every tactical shift, every contact on the field. His eyes betray a wild ecstasy and agony as his team thrives or falls. His game plan demands relentless commitment-the famous gegenpress-and he is one of the great personal motivators in all sport.

A lively chronicle of how the 2020 Crimson Tide became Nick Saban’s “ultimate team.”

Being a University of Michigan football fan should be joyful. Michigan is an elite academic institution whose football team boasts forty-three Big Ten championships.
 
But these days, college football is complicated. The NCAA is corrupt and exploitative, and Michigan keeps losing to Ohio State. It’s hard not to wonder, as Slate writer and superfan Ben Mathis-Lilley does in this book: Why are we doing this?
 
The Hot Seat is a chronicle of one of the wildest years in Michigan football history, but also a search for the truth about fandom, from the pages of history books to the wilderness of online forums. Is it embarrassing to care about what happens in a game? Why is Jim Harbaugh like that? Is it somehow Thomas Jefferson’s fault? This book explores all these questions and many more.

Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of Blink and The Bomber Mafia and host of the podcast Revisionist History, explores what sets high achievers apart—from Bill Gates to the Beatles—in this seminal work from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.