World Cup reading: new football books from grassroots to Ronaldo and Zidane | OneFootball

Bookshops are filling up with fresh World Cup reading, from Sam Robles' evocative Football Roots to new looks at Cristiano Ronaldo, Zinédine Zidane and Didier Deschamps.

According to L'Équipe, Robles offers an immersive atlas of the game far from globalised arenas, tracing makeshift goals, scuffed lines and street rituals where football reads as a shared, almost anthropological language. Football Roots, published by Assouline, costs 120€.

Régis Dupont, who started writing on Cristiano Ronaldo in 2002, updates his 2021 portrait. The paperback, Cristiano Ronaldo, 25 ans au sommet du football, grows to 109 chapters and tracks a captain far from retirement, priced 9,90€ by Solar-L'ÉEquipe.

Sociologist Stéphane Beaud delivers a concise study of Zinédine Zidane, presented as a sociological reading rather than a biography, giving a sociohistorical perspective on the 1998 Ballon d'Or, often linked with succeeding Didier Deschamps. Drawn from near exhaustive scholarship and exchanges with Guy Lacombe, Zidane's mentor at Cannes, the 128-page book is published by La Découverte at 11€.

Cartoonist Faro gathers World Cup tales in Un truc de foot, les anecdotes les plus incroyables de la Coupe du monde, with Arrigoni and Aranda. He also dedicates Bleus, les années Deschamps to the coach set to leave after the North American World Cup, the two Jungle titles priced 13,95€ and 16,95€.

Also out: Didier Deschamps, ce que je sais de lui by Dominique Rouch, Dictionnaire inattendu du foot by Maurice Szafran, Cantona, une butographie by Valentin Deudon, and Et Ousmane Ballon d'Or! by Fabien Baumann.

Source: L'Équipe