BOOK REVIEWS
Interest
Barca
Simon Kuper
We Rate:
BOOK SYNOPSIS
From the best selling co-author of Soccernomics comes the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful football club in the world - and how that envied position now hangs in the balance.
Barca is not just the world's most popular sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organisations on the planet with almost 250 million followers on social media and 4 million visitors to its Camp Nou stadium each year, there's little wonder it's motto is more than a club. But it was not always so.
In the past three decades, Barcelona has transformed from regional team to global powerhouse becoming a model of sporting excellence and a consistent winner of silverware. Simon Kuper unravels how these transformations took place. He outlines the organisational structure behind the club's business decisions and details the work of its coaches, medics, data analysts and nutritionists who have revolutionised the sporting world. And, of course he studies the towering influence of the club's two greatest legends, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi.
Like many leading global businesses, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders a few behind the scenes. But, after decades of writing about the sports and the club, Kuper was given unprecedented access to the inner sanctum and to the people who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top.
Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest successes and upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond football to understand Barca as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.
OUR REVIEW
A truly fascinating insight into one of the biggest clubs in world football and how they transformed themselves into a powerhouse of the game against a backdrop of a strongly defined culture amid their walls that has both positively and negatively impacted their standing in the game today.
The author looks at the history of the club and how over time they have transformed the club from a powerful regional club to the global phenomenon that we still see today, despite the financial difficulties that have impacted them on a regular basis.
It explores the deep culture that has been defined over time, how many of their traditions are kept secret, how there academy is controlled by certain guidelines and has played a huge part in bringing through a world class cohort of players over many decades that have been part of many of the great sides that have graced the Catalan giants.
The book flows pretty well considering the many different facets that face a subject as wide and varied as this and Simon Kuper is known for his mastery when telling a subject amid the brilliance of the research. A masterful book and subject matter and a piece of art in the football book word.
This is a must-read for sports fans anywhere and should be a high priority on anyones list whether it is nighttime reading or one of your chosen holiday books.
