***Winner of an English PEN Award 2022***

Soccer is so much more than the billionaire buyers and eye-watering signing fees that dominate the headlines. Look beyond the Premiership and the World Cup, the sublime brilliance of Messi and Mbappé, and you'll find a story unparalleled in the world of sport.

From England, France and Germany to Palestine, South Africa and Brazil, A People's History of Soccer reveals how the 'beautiful game' has been a powerful instrument of emancipation for workers, feminists, anti-colonialist activists, young people and protesters around the world.

Mickaël Correia's history from below retraces the journeys of professionals, amateurs and enthusiasts alike. Countering the clichés about soccer fans, he dives into countercultures born after the Second World War, from English hooligans to the ultras who played a central role in the Arab Spring. And with chapters on anti-fascism, the women's game, and the rise in community-owned clubs, Correia reminds us that soccer can be a powerful social and political force - as generous as it is subversive.

Mickaël Correia is a journalist at Mediapart. He is the author of several books, and his work focuses on social and ecological struggles as well as working-class culture. He has written for Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Canard Enchaîné and La Revue du Crieur. His passion for football began when he was 4, with kickabouts on the streets of Roubaix.

Introduction: Football grounds, grounds of struggle
Part I: Defend: Working class resistance to the bourgeois order
1. Kicking off: Riotous balls and social control
2. Normalising bodies, shaping minds: The birth of an industrial sport
3. The people's game: Football as a cultural trait of the working class
4. The Munitionnettes: The saga of the first women football players in Britain
5. Class against class: Working-class football in France, an extension of the field of struggle
Part II: Attack: Assault on dictatorships
6. 'A small way of saying "no"': Italy, the USSR, Spain: stadiums under totalitarian regimes
7. Ball at the feet against the iron fist: Football's resistance to Nazi domination
8. 'Corinthian democracy': Football and self-organisation against the Brazilian dictatorship
9. On the front line, Tahrir Square: Ultras Ahlawy fans at the heart of the 2011 revolution in Egypt
Part III: Dribble: Outmanoeuvring colonialism
10. The Algerian Independence Eleven: A liberation struggle in football boots
11. When Palestine occupies the pitch: Football as a political weapon in the hands of the Palestinians
12. Dribbling the ball, a decolonial art: Afro-Brazilian identities and indigenous resistance in football
13. Sending colonialism off: Football and emancipation struggles in sub-Saharan Africa
Part IV: Support: Collective passions and popular cultures
14. 'You'll Never Walk Alone': Hooliganism and subcultures in British stands
15. The twelfth man: The Italian ultras movement: from political militancy to supporter autonomy
16. 'God and the devil': Maradona, between popular passion and fan cult
17. 'We are lovers, not fighters': Istanbul's ultras and Turkish power
Part V: Outflank: Facing the football industry: fight and reinvent
18. Football for footballers!: From May'68 to the fans' revolt
19. Tackling sexism: Women's football against the French sporting patriarchy
20. "Here it's about punk football": Fan-owned clubs in England
21. Play on the left wing: Hamburg's FC Sankt Pauli or the pirates of the football business
22. Wild balls, balls on the margins: Street football wrong-foots at the institutional game

Postscript to the English edition
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Index