Five Books to Make You Love Soccer
CBS Sports reporter Sandra Herrera picks five titles for newbies and diehards alike.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has been thrilling stadiums full of people throughout North America since June, with 48 teams competing in 104 matches across the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Alta Journal caught up with CBS Sports reporter Sandra Herrera ahead of the final game, on July 19 at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, to ask for book recommendations that may deepen any fan’s appreciation of soccer.
Before she was a reporter, Herrera recalls, she sought out books other than players’ autobiographies. She encourages everyone—whether a die-hard fan or a casual watcher—to read widely and engage with different points of view. “You have to get into the books and see things from the expert’s perspective,” she says. “Hopefully, if you read them, you can try a little bit of your own critical thinking and say, ‘Yes, I agree with this’ or ‘No, I disagree, and here’s why.’”
An award-winning journalist, Herrera is also a cocreator and cohost of Attacking Third—a podcast covering women’s soccer in the United States. Her reporting has included Los Angeles’s Angel City FC and the Bay Area’s Bay FC teams. Her love of the sport began when she was growing up in Chicago, watching World Cup games and cheering for El Tri, Mexico’s national soccer team, in her parents’ backyard or her grandparents’ basement.
“I think a lot of times, when you go into World Cups, there are your contenders, your favorites, and a lot of pundits will often lean into Europe for those teams,” says Herrera. “You look for those quote-unquote upsets, you look for those moments, people look for that unpredictability.”
Here are five books Herrera recommends.•
SOCCERNOMICS: WHY EUROPEAN MEN AND AMERICAN WOMEN USUALLY WIN—AND AMERICAN MEN DON’T (YET) (2026 WORLD CUP EDITION), BY SIMON KUPER AND STEFAN SZYMANSKI
“It’s about the economics within soccer, with an emphasis on FIFA a little bit and how they operate. I would say anybody who has an interest in literally anything related to the sport should maybe start with something like that—it’s very vast and gives you the overview of things.”
UNDER THE LIGHTS AND IN THE DARK: UNTOLD STORIES OF WOMEN'S SOCCER, BY GWENDOLYN OXENHAM
“It highlights players’ journeys in navigating professional careers in women’s soccer. [This career] is not one that’s typically glamorous; especially if you’re talking or recounting the history of women’s soccer, it’s not always glorious. I think today you see a lot of stories and headlines about contracts and numbers and figures, and that was not the case even two years ago. That is a good book to go back and revisit a very specific time in women’s soccer.”
INVERTING THE PYRAMID: THE HISTORY OF SOCCER TACTICS, BY JONATHAN WILSON
“Probably the book that gets mentioned around the space a lot. It dives into the history of tactics and formations, and it gives you layers of history while also educating on the sport.”
SECRETS OF SUCCESS: INSIGHTS FROM MEGAN RAPINOE’S WORLD-CLASS SOCCER CAREER, BY MEG LINEHAN
“While I can sit here and be like, ‘Go learn about the history of soccer, go learn about tactics information,’ for a lot of people, their gateway into many sports, not just soccer, will typically be through a player. Meg Linehan does a really good job in her book of tracking and highlighting the success of Megan Rapinoe: the highs and lows of her journey and the pinnacle moments in the 2019 Women’s World Cup.”
MY BEAUTIFUL SISTERS: A MEMOIR OF COURAGE, HOPE, AND THE AFGHAN WOMEN'S SOCCER TEAM, BY KHALIDA POPAL
“It’s a very specific story about one team that I think needs to have more stories told about it. The Afghanistan women’s national team has been through a lot. They have found themselves playing games, no longer playing games; they have found themselves establishing a team, having to be on hiatus, and then reestablishing themselves again.”
Elizabeth Casillas is an associate editor at Alta Journal. A graduate of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, she has previously written for the Poly Post and Enspire Magazine.
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