Touchdown in Europe

When you talk about football in Europe, everybody thinks you mean soccer. American football is still a developing sport in Europe, despite having a centennial history behind it. Packed with game scores and interesting anecdotes, "Touchdown in Europe", by Massimo Foglio and Mark L. Ford, tells the story of the first 85 years of American football in Europe from the very beginning: Thanksgiving Day, 1897, near Paris, France, when the gridiron game made its first appearance. During the 20th century there had been a few attempts to introduce Europeans to the game. For the most part, though, football had been confined inside American military bases, especially after World War Two, when American presence on European soil was at its greatest number. Finally, gridiron football in Europe developed as a local sport, thanks to some individuals in Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy and Norway in the late 1970s, and now the game is played throughout the entire continent with a multitude of championship, leagues, teams and competition. "Touchdown in Europe" isn't about the present status of the game in Europe. Instead, it's the little-known story of the first 80 years of trying to introduce the sport as something to be organized by, played by, and enjoyed by Europeans. At 276 pages, it's filled with stories and information never before published before in book form.