World Soccer Talk is proud to announce its publication of a brand-new book that’s written specifically for fans of the world’s most popular sports league, the English Premier League.

Written by World Soccer Talk Senior Writer Kartik Krishnaiyer, Blue With Envy charts the meteoric rise of England’s top-flight soccer league through the eyes of an American soccer fan that fell in love with the game in the early 1980s during the “British Invasion” when many players and teams from the UK began playing in the United States.

Blue With Envy: My American Journey With Manchester City has three main threads running through the book. First is the aforementioned growth of the English game in the States. Second are the ups and downs of Manchester City’s rise from nearly falling into bankruptcy in the early 80s to reaching the dizzying heights of being the richest team in the world. And third is the evolution of how watching English soccer from thousands of miles away has evolved from the days of FOX Soccer and ESPN to the 380 live games a season offered by NBC Sports.

Whether you’re a Manchester City supporter or not, Blue With Envy offers plenty of first-hand stories that you can relate to as a soccer fan in the States. Read Krishnaiyer’s fascinating account of how his friends in political circles looked down on supporting soccer, and how the sports culture in the United States changed to where it’s now trendy to watch the beautiful game. Plus Krishnaiyer discusses the turning point of when watching the Premier League changed in the United States from being an underground culture to a mainstream viewing audience.

Starting today, Blue With Envy is available to purchase as an eBook for $4.99. Professionally published, the book is highly recommended for soccer fans, and is available for the Amazon Kindle, Nook, as well as in several other formats including PDF, txt, etc, and is now available in iBooks for the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can also download the first few chapters for free via Amazon Kindle or Smashwords.

A lifelong lover of soccer, Kartik served from January 2010 until May 2013 as the Director of Communications and Public Relations for the North American Soccer League (NASL). Krishnaiyer previously hosted the American Soccer Show on the Champions Soccer Radio Network, which was streamed on Live365. His soccer writing has been featured in several media outlets including The Guardian and The Telegraph. Kartik is a senior writer for World Soccer Talk.

With today’s launch, World Soccer Talk is proud to add book publishing to one of its many features as the leading independent soccer website on the Web. Since 2005, World Soccer Talk has been a trusted source for news, opinion and analysis about the world’s most popular sport. In addition to its website, World Soccer Talk features the longest running soccer podcast in the world, a video channel that features exclusive soccer documentaries, as well as very active social media communities on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Instagram.

Plus this is the first of many new exciting announcements we plan on making between now and the start of World Cup 2014.

If you’re a writer who has a book idea and is interested in being published by World Soccer Talk, please contact info@worldsoccertalk.cms.futbolsitesnetwork.com for more details.

Here are several endorsements of Krishnaiyer’s work by notable soccer aficionados:

“Kartik is one of the most discerning football followers I know. His ability to synthesize a fan’s passion with unbiased analysis is crucial to the way I look at and write about the game. While he is one of the most knowledgeable people I know on English football, that knowledge is matched by a supporter’s passion when the topic veers to Manchester City. There may be nobody better situated to trumpet, critique, and defend the Citizens’ past, present, and future than Krishnaiyer.”  — Richard Farley, NBCSports.com

“Kartik is something very few Yanks can boast: a true lifelong football man. His encyclopedic knowledge of English football is wrapped around a love of Manchester City Football Club.

“Second generation from India, Kartik has always been a world traveler. In his professional life, his love of travel has extended into attending matches from the 1980’s (a very different football universe to now) both on the Continent and throughout the UK where he still has family, a core of which are into their second generation as City supporters.

“Kartik grew up immersed in the club just as so many Britons have been for generations. He sees the game with European or British eyes; Yet he’s also devoured most of the extraordinary evolution of US sport of the past 30 years. He knows the measure of a next-level athlete and importantly how that relates to footballers, and the evolution of the game itself. The intrigue lies in the compare and contrast, and Kartik will certainly contrast.

“As well his football journalistic endeavors in the US and his leadership in bringing the NASL back to life, he has massive experience covering European football culture. He thrives on digging out the real story from the club’s training grounds to supporter culture in city centers, to the match day experience at more grounds than most North American’s have seen on the box.

“I would guess most that know him well could envisage him in a heated football debate whilst using up his last breath.”

Peter Brown, former CMO of CSRNUSA.com

Please join me in congratulating Krishnaiyer on publishing his first book.

A second book is already in the works.