Before They Were Stars: How Messi, Alex Morgan, and Other Soccer Greats Rose to the Top Jkulsson IllugiPevná vazba

Learn how the top soccer stars of all time grew up and conquered the sport. This guide follows fourteen of the best men's and women's players from their first childhood encounter with association football--whether at the school gym or a pickup game in a vacant lot--to their first appearance in a top-division match or their first international cap. For every one of them, it was a journey with its share of both tragedy and triumph.

Did you know that . . . . . . as a boy, Pel practiced with a newspaper-stuffed sock or a grapefruit, because he couldn't afford a proper football? . . . Mia Hamm discovered the sport of soccer as a toddler in Florence, Italy, where her father, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was stationed? . . . at age ten, Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency that threatened to end his