Summer Book Series: La Roja by Jimmy Burns

On the table is Jimmy Burn´s new book La Roja: How Soccer Conquered Spain and How Spanish Soccer Conquered the World, just released from Nation Books and available at Amazon.com and through their Kindle store. The aim of the book is to explore Spanish culture and society through the lens of Spanish football and for the most part it extends itself nicely between those places that another seminal book in the sphere of football writers writing about Spain places itself: Phil Ball´s Morbo, a History of Spanish Football.

It begins at the beginning really, at the Rio Tinto mines just outside of Huelva, where English miners started kick-abouts, to the founding of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona and why they were destined to unite supporters and succeed like no other clubs in Spain right there at the beginning, to Di Stefano and Kubala, Cruyff and Butragueño, and many of the other key players in the history of the Spanish game. Throughout much of the book too is the spectre of Franco and how his gravitational pull influenced the Spanish game, and if you're confused about the Spanish Civil War and the part that football played in both extending an olive branch to opposing forces and also heightening these tribal differences, the political, social, ethnic and even linguistic reasons that separate Spain even today.

I highly recommend it.