Pata

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Yes, I know; however, all evidence points to the fact that he is lying. I remember rooting around for some English-language books on Argentine football and couldn't find anything. Some great-great stories out there too. With all the material could be better than Futebol, I reckon, whenever someone gets around to it.

Couple I didn't see mentioned (did skim through the threa rather quickly, though): David Conn's The Beautiful Game?: Searching for the Soul of Football - about the state of the game and its finances. Absolutely superb. Harry Pearson's The Far Corner - a football season in the North-East in the 1993/94 season. To describe it as absolutely wonderful would be an understatement. Andrew Jenning's Foul! - lays into corruption at FIFA - Blatter, Warner et al. Someone mentioned Lars Leese' "The Keeper of Dreams" - it was translated some years ago, actually, and is a very human and touching story. Would also thoroughly recommend it. One football book I'd recommend people to steer clear of is "Comrade Jim" by Jim Riordan, an English fella who lived in the Soviet Union and claims to have played 2 games for Spartak Moscow, going into some detail in describing the games he took part in. Being a Spartak fan from my days back in the USSR I thought - ah, interesting, and did some research and it turns out that his claims are complete and utter b*llocks - the games he claims to have taken part in never happened, the Spartak formation is all wrong, etc. I actually phone the publishers, asking them how could they possibly print this sh*t w/o checking if any of it was true. "We did..." "Yeah, right..." And that's just the chapter on his football escapades, so I can only imagine how much of the rest of the book is actually true.

You can get the Spartak book on amazon. It came out a couple of months ago and covers the period up until 1991. I was browsing through some American equivalent of Waterstones in San Diego last month when to my great surprise I came across it in the sparcely-populated soccer section - turns out the author is a professor at UCSD. He's written a couple of papers on the subject before and it looks pretty in-depth from footballing as well as sociological point of view (just glanced through it so far - it's in the queue of books awaiting attention).

When I was a spotty lad of 15, during and after my GCSEs, I worked as a translator (not many Russian speakers about in Liverpool at the time) @ Euro 96 @ Anfield and Old Trafford - only got paid expenses, like, but free tickets to all the games in the North-West* (even those not involving Russia) and got to roam around the ground, press centre, press conferences and stuff - bumped into all sorts - Russian, Czech, Italian, Germans, Zidane, Cruyff, Hiddink, Sacchi, Hansen, Lynam... Did the Russian pre-match announcements on the pitch @ Old Trafford for Russia-Germany and a whole game @ Anfield - Russia-Czech Republic (from the gantry under the roof of the Main Stand). Shame Russia were so sh*te... again. *had the offer of a final ticket as well but had to pay for it and I didn't have the 100 quid for the ticket and the train fare down to London.

Well, Ceausescu did his best to run the country into the ground and it was seen as the 2nd poorest country in the old Soviet Block (Albania was comfortably the biggest s***hole). I work with a Romanian girl and she rips the p*ss out of it. Another girl I went to uni with moved out there a few years ago and seems to have settled in fine. The lads on the Romanian side I've been discussing the match with seem perfectly fine and Steaua FC were pretty forthcoming in offering a pitch for a match. Haven't been myself before and looking forward to ticking another place off the list and looking forward to a slightly more rustic away than your Madrids and Milans. But back to my original question - is there anyone going off here who might fancy game?

Do you know if any of the local TLW footballers are going though? Might drop them PMs as the threads move down quite quickly here, it seems - give it a couple of days and my question will be lost in the vastness of this forum.

Do you know if perhaps someone has and might be keen for a game out there?

(bump) Anyone else keen for this event?

+1. When we played these games in Barcelona, Milan and Madrid, playing the night before the main match worked well - people usually get there that day and there is no clash with getting bevvied on the day of the LFC match.

(copy of the thread from TLW Footy - maybe, more people will see it here) Hi, lads, I am from RAWK. I am currently organising a match against Steaua fans for our Europa League trip to Bucharest and wondered if any of you fancied a game (I currently have a mixture of names off RAWK/iLFC/TIA). Steaua have been helpful saying that we can use one of their training pitches but we can't confirm a k/o time yet as LFC need to confirm what time they're going to be using the facilities that evening. Let me know. Cheers, Sash

Lads, any of you going to Bucharest for the Europa League match and fancy a game out there?