Our selection of the best football books to read

To learn more about our Blues

Vice-world champion, the France team will travel to Germany with the ambition of winning the competition, and erasing the bad memory of elimination against Switzerland during the previous Euro. The Blues will obviously be able to count on the essential Kylian Mbappé, whose career is at a turning point, as he has decided to leave Paris Saint-Germain and the French championship. From his debut at AS Bondy to his hat-trick in the World Cup final, delve into Kyks’ journey through numerous testimonies and anecdotes in Kylian Mbappé Lottin, by Nicolas Gettliffe.

Like Kylian Mabppé before him, Edouardo Camavinga splashed the world of football with his talent at a very young age. At only 21 years old, he is preparing to play his second major competition with the Blues, after having already participated in the final of the last World Cup in Qatar. With already a Champions League in his pocket, and a final to come, the former Stade Rennais kiddo already has a career and a personality that deserve to be explored in more depth, by discovering his story told by Cyrill Collot and Lucas Caioli.

Among the other essential characters of the summer, it is impossible not to think of Didier Deschamps, the coach of the Blues since 2012. A real machine for winning titles, Desch does not really resemble the current stars of his profession, whether in his communication or in his game. But his method, which seems perfectly tailored for selection football, is rewarded with indisputable results. Group management, pragmatism and hatred of defeat, discover The Deschamps Method, deciphered by Philippe Rodier.

Because football is not just a sport…

If Euro 2024 in Germany will probably not generate as much controversy as the last World Cup in Qatar, this major international gathering will, as always, be a good opportunity to remember that the world of football goes far beyond the lines of the field, and that it interferes everywhere in society, in politics and in geopolitics… Romain Molina, independent journalist, has been interested in these questions for a long time, and returns in the second opus of his series The Football Industry to the links that world football leaders are talking to organized crime.

In France, perhaps more than elsewhere in Europe, football is a social phenomenon which regularly unleashes passions, in one direction or the other. From the darling of an entire country who discovered with his paternalistic gaze a scarred kid from the working-class neighborhoods of Boulogne-sur-Mer in 2006, Franck Ribéry quickly passed to the status of pariah, criticized for his morals, his religion, or mocked for his expression. oral… However, Kaiser Franck, as Bayern Munich supporters call him, never claimed to be an example for anyone. Journalist and author, notably for Cahiers du Football, Gilles Juan looks back on the journey of a unique and incredibly talented footballer, in an imaginary self-portrait in homage to his idol.

If football business and its excesses are at the heart of many works, we must not forget that the power of its culture can also serve more noble causes. In A Popular History of Football, Mickael Correia, now a journalist for Mediapart, tells the story of this unique sport from below, focusing on football used as a tool of emancipation and counterculture, at the four corners of the world.

More recently, the same author signed with 14 other journalists, essayists and academics, Tout n’est pas Footu, a book which invites us to discover 15 reasons why it is still possible to love football and its positive impact on the world .