Eat your heart out, Dream Team. If there has ever been a dream club in European football, Barcelona is it: purveyor of fine football and political defiance, hotbed of intrigue, the darling of the liberal intelligentsia and the envy of all the other ugly soccer ducklings grubbing away in the mud and grime at the bottom of the beautiful game. The photographs, or rather the captions, at this book's centre illustrate its flavour perfectly: the Nou Camp as a cathedral; the mustachioed founding fathers, among them the oh-so-English Witty brothers; a striking juxtaposition of raised arms and flying legs, labelled respectively," Francoist forces `liberate' Barcelona" and "Ladislao Kubala in action". Burns is as handy with Catalan history as he is with portraits of supporters, action replays, boardroom gossip and titbits of insider info on an awe-inspiring parade of stars: Maradona, Cruyff, Romario, Laudrup, Stoichkov, Ronaldo. Think you know enough about FC Barcelona already? You're wrong - and here's the proof.
