La Roja: A Journey Through Spanish Football - Softcover

'A splendid book' Independent

'And so the final of Europe's biggest club competition will proceed without Europe's two best teams, or a new eruption of the bitter rivalry carefully chronicled by Jimmy Burns in his vivid survey of Spanish football, La Roja' --Mark Damazer, Financial Times

'Those who like to sneer that the world's most popular sport is a grossly exaggerated and often meaningless metaphor for the battle of real life should get hold of this splendid book. At the very least, it points out that if football is essentially a simple game, only relentless hard work, superior imagination and considerable passion can make it so. However, in the extraordinary rise of Spain to the number-one football nation there have been, as Jimmy Burns outlines with great skill, quite a number of other factors' --James Lawton, Independent

'Those who like to sneer that the world s most popular sport is a grossly exaggerated and often meaningless metaphor for the battle of real life should get hold of this splendid book. At the very least, it points out that if football is essentially a simple game, only relentless hard work, superior imagination and considerable passion can make it so. However, in the extraordinary rise of Spain to the number-one football nation there have been, as Jimmy Burns outlines with great skill, quite a number of other factors'

'A brilliant and comprehensive study' --Richard Wilson --James Lawton, Independent

Jimmy Burns is an award-winning journalist and author of seven other books. He was born in Madrid in 1953. He has reported for the Financial Times, London Observer, BBC and the Economist, and was the FT correspondent in South America in the early 80s and his book on Argentina and the Falklands War, The Land that lost its Heroes, won the 1988 Somerset Maugham Award for non-fiction. When not in Spain, or travelling elsewhere, he lives in London.