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Stickers, trading cards, Subbuteo figurines, Michael Hardcastle novels – in the period between England’s 1966 World Cup win and the dawn of the premiership in the early 1990s, a wide variety of football collectibles featured in catalogue pages, display cases and bedrooms the world over. This volume celebrates that era through anecdotal reflections on hundreds of pieces of football memorabilia.

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The 2018/19 Premier League saw the African footballers Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah share the Golden Boot with Arsenal’s Gabon striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. This book explores the careers of those who preceded them in the 130 years since Arthur Wharton became the first African player in the Football League, and how they confronted racism to help change the face of English football.

After a disastrous few years, Les Bleus’ triumph at the World Cup in 1998, the year Kylian Mbappé was born, transformed the footballing culture of France. Matt Spiro’s analysis of the team’s journey to another win two decades later casts light on what it is to be French and the concept of ‘footballing intelligence’.

As a teenager, Ben Smith shared Arsenal training sessions with Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright, and looked set for a bright career, but spent his playing time with lower league teams such as Reading, Southend and Weymouth. This account alternates between his life in football, including his frustrations and low points, and his later experiences teaching and coaching.

The Secret Footballer tells more anecdotes from his own career in the game, along with tales about other players, and reflections on the difficulty of choosing a new career to move on to. His anonymity allows him to be honest about his own insecurities, and the bad behaviour, personal rivalries and struggles with mental health he has witnessed.

This biography of the footballing great focuses on the personal choices and attributes that Messi and his family developed from an early age, and how his humility and work ethic fed into his greatest moments in the game.

Kylian Mbappé became the world’s most expensive teenage footballer when he signed for PSG in 2018, and has also starred in the French national team. This account by two journalists discusses his early life and career in detail.

Mario Balotelli won league titles in Italy and England, having played for elite clubs including Inter Milan and Liverpool, but is best remembered for his off-field antics, training ground bust-ups, and run-ins with the police and the fire brigade. Caioli, a respected sports journalist, discusses both his career and personal life, drawing on interviews with friends, family and teammates.

City fans have recently experienced the heights of the Champions League under Sheikh Mansour’s ownership, but many also remember the lean years and the 1970s relegation to Division Two. After an introduction from Pep Guardiola, Clayton explores the club’s history from foundation in 1880 up to modern times, with pictures of club legends in action and behind the scenes

The popular footballer Mark Bright played for various clubs in FA, League and play-off finals, and is now a TV pundit. This memoir, introduced by Gary Lineker, reflects on his career but also tells the story of his turbulent childhood, during which he found a stable home with a foster family after his birth parents split up, but experienced racism at school and elsewhere.

From Palace to Arsenal and beyond Ian Wright talks about the Wenger era and his ascent to the professional ranks from Sunday morning football, and gives his opinions on punditry, agents and racism in football.

Footballer Alan Smith, who went on to become a respected journalist, describes the feeling of going from the lower leagues to George Graham’s Arsenal, after partnering Gary Lineker at Leicester, rooming with Gazza, and scoring that famous first goal at Anfield in 1989.

Harry Redknapp was not an obvious candidate for a successful career in football management but he consistently made his teams punch above their weight. Guardian columnist John Crace tries to understand what makes him tick in this account of his career.

Picking out key fixtures, including the 1909 FA Cup Final, the last match of the Busby Babes before the Munich air crash in 1958, and the comeback against Juventus that kept them on course for the treble in 1999, this sporting history illuminates the evolution of one of the foremost clubs of the 20th century.

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Football is a billion-pound industry, and this tongue-in-cheek illustrated guide takes an insiders’ view of the big money deals, youth scouts, agents’ tricks, scandals and rows that lie behind the surface of every famous player and team.

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In this quirky collection of wide-ranging chats with famous football figures all the interviewers are celebrities: the pairs include Johnny Marr with Pep Guardiola, Clare Balding with Lucy Bronze, and John Bishop with Jürgen Klopp. With introductions by Raheem Sterling and Gary Lineker, the book was published to raise funds for the UN Refugee Agency.

Although less lauded than some of the glamorous players around him, fellow pros and coaches acknowledged that Michael Carrick held a key role in Manchester United’s winning team in the last decade of Alex Ferguson’s reign. This autobiography reveals his thoughts about his time at West Ham, Spurs, United and England, and the players and managers he worked with including Harry Redknapp, Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham.

In 1977 Kenny Dalglish moved from Celtic to take over Kevin Keegan’s number 7 shirt at Liverpool, following the high-profile transfer of ‘Mighty Mouse’ to Hamburg. This biography explores contrasts and parallels between two brilliant careers as players and managers: Keegan was hailed the ‘Geordie messiah’ who revived Newcastle’s fortunes, while Dalglish won titles at Liverpool and, after the trauma of Hillsborough, at Blackburn.

No less eye-catching than the famous yellow jerseys of Brazil are the team colours of less successful international teams such as Liberia, Malaysia or Aruba. This reference work illustrates the home and away colours of 223 footballing nations affiliated to FIFA, correct for the World Cup of 2018. Each entry also includes key facts about the team, such as top goalscorer and record in international tournaments.

Charting changing graphic styles and printing fashions from the 1960s to the 1990s, this celebration of football programmes is organized alphabetically and includes examples from most English Football League clubs and the leading Scottish teams. Demonstrating the idiosyncratic styles of each club as well as common themes such as aerial shots of the stadium on the cover, the collection also explores themes such as ‘Manager’s Notes’ and ‘At Home With…’.

Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the greatest football managers of all time, having won more trophies than any other. For this candid account, football writer Taylor followed him through two key seasons, from the low point of 2005–6, when there were notorious disputes with Roy Keane and Ruud van Nistelrooy, through to ultimate triumph in the 2006–7 Premier League.

Although they grew up and learned their football in Scotland, Joe and Gerry Baker represented the countries of their birth, earning caps for England and the United States respectively. This double biography follows their footballing careers at clubs including Hibernian, Arsenal and Torino in the 1950s and 1960s.

The success of the Hibernian football club in Edinburgh prompted the formation of a similar team from among the Irish Catholic community in Glasgow in the 1880s. This history tells the story of the resulting club, Celtic, considering the religious and political issues that underlie its identity and describing its growth and fluctuating fortunes, both on and off the pitch.

A journalist, footballer (centre forward and England captain) and one of the founding fathers of the modern game, Charles William Alcock wrote Football: The Association Game in 1906.

The four England captains discussed in this history of post-war English football are Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, Gary Lineker and David Beckham. Each a world famous and long-serving skipper, they represent their times: from the hard-working Wright and the glamorous Moore, embodiment of the social mobility of the 1960s, to Lineker, the savvy exploiter of the new media age, and Beckham, the global celebrity.

The four England captains discussed in this history of post-war English football are Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, Gary Lineker and David Beckham. Each a world famous and long-serving skipper, they represent their times: from the hard-working Wright and the glamorous Moore, embodiment of the social mobility of the 1960s, to Lineker, the savvy exploiter of the new media age, and Beckham, the global celebrity. Slightly off-mint.

Peter Chapman was 18 years old in 1966, the year of Harold Wilson, the seamen’s strike, London ‘swinging’ to a soundtrack of Beatles and Rolling Stones, and England’s victory in the World Cup. Chapman, whose hopes of being a professional footballer had been dashed, but who would become an outstanding football journalist, gives a vivid picture of the lost world of Britain in the Sixties from the perspective of his world in Islington, north London.

From the flowering of Ferguson's Manchester United in the early 1990s to the last-gasp championship won by their now astronomically well-funded rivals, Manchester City, in 2012, this book charts the rise of the Premier League through ten milestone matches. Slightly off-mint.

As a revolutionary players' union rep, innovative manager and pioneering presenter and pundit, Jimmy Hill had a profound effect on football. This new edition of his autobiography, first published in 1998, contains an additional chapter reflecting on his remarkable career.