What You Think You Know About Football is Wrong

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What to expect

Our view of football will never be the same again… Written by a world-respected football historian, this football history/gift title reveals the global game’s greatest myths and untruths.

Football has been completely mythologized and many of the things football fans think they know about football and its history turn out not to be true. We want to believe the myths, and so they become accepted. So much football writing is not properly researched, and so the myths get repeated… again and again and again.

Backed up by the highest level of academic research yet written in an accessible, mass-market style, the book will explore the truth behind many accepted myths. For example, did you know:
- The Germans took football to Brazil, not the English
- Rugby and not football could quite easily have been the world’s leading sport
- There are gay professional players ….and always have been!
- Goalkeepers should not dive for penalties
- Football hooliganism did not begin in England
- Shirt colours do make a difference
- Cambridge and not Sheffield is the home of the oldest football club in the world
- Arsenal should not be in the Premier League… they cheated to be there
- The Dynamo Kiev team were not executed after beating a German SS team in 1941
- England did not win the World Cup fairly in 1966 … but not in the way you think!

Written by Kevin Moore, the founding director of the National Football Museum (the world’s leading football museum), this thoroughly researched and authoritative book will debunk more than 50 of the greatest myths surrounding football.

Critics Review

  • Takes a wrecking ball to many of the myths and assumptions about football that usually pass unchallenged

    John Motson

  • a must read

    These Football Times

  • A feast of contrary and controversial assertions which make you question so much you assume to be true about the game.

    Guy Mowbray

  • Wonderfully entertaining and enlightening… a hugely enjoyable feast of football facts you are ever likely to read.

    Paul Trevillion

  • Throws a Molotov cocktail at conventional footballing wisdom. Highly entertaining, wittily written and more entertaining than a 4–4 draw.

    Daniel Gray

  • …an engaging and entertaining book… This is a must-read for anyone who thinks they know the history of our game.

    Gary James

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