Graham Hunter

The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

Barca

Sid Lowe

Philippe Auclair

Jonathan Wilson

James Montague

Rob Smyth

Iain Macintosh

Miguel Delaney

Tim Vickery

Sergio Levinsky

The Blizzard is a quarterly football publication, put together by a cooperative of journalists and authors, its main aim to provide a platform for top-class writers from across the globe to enjoy the space and the freedom to write what they like about the football stories that matter to them. Contents of Issue Twelve ---------------- The Rivals ---------------- * Sid Lowe, Power Play - Carles Rexach and Jorge Valdano discuss the changing nature of the Real Madrid-Barcelona rivalry * Miguel Delaney, Gamechanger - Johan Cruyff on his role in creating the style of Barcelona and modern football * Graham Hunter, An Honourable Man - How Vicente del Bosque overcame rejection by Real Madrid to lead Spain to glory --------------------------- A Game of Chess --------------------------- * Philippe Auclair, Beyond the System - Could the lessons of chess show football the way to an exciting new future? * Scott Oliver, Play Jazz, not Chess - Reflections on football, order and the imagination, and the need for improvisation ------------ Theory ------------ * Steve Menary, Maximum Opportunity - Was Charles Hughes a long-ball zealot, or pragmatist reacting to necessity? * Sergio Levinsky, The Cult of the Pibe - Argentina’s love affair with scruffy urchins with feet of gold --------------------------------- Defenders of the Faith --------------------------------- * Paul Brown, The Birth of the Fan - Why Victorians flocked to watch 22 men kicking a pig’s bladder about * James Montague, Jerusalem Syndrome - The mysterious disappearance of Guma Aguiar, the saviour of Beitar Jerusalem * Brian Homewood, Identity Crisis - Unpicking the convoluted threads of Mexico’s franchise system * Bartosz Nowicki, Dream Fulfilled - Relief and glee as Cardiff City finally found their way into the Premier League -------------------------- Against the Odds -------------------------- * Robin Bairner, Sleeping Giant - In 1982, Jean-Pierre Adams was given anaesthetic before knee surgery. He hasn’t woken up. * Richard Jolly, And Not to Yield - Only one sportsman can match Ryan Giggs for longevity: the New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter * Javier Sauras and Felix Lill, The Street Dogs of Manila - The Philippines are rising through the rankings, but are they Filipino enough * Matthew Campelli, Second City Syndrome - Why has Birmingham struggled for football success for 30 years? --------------- Polemics --------------- * Alex Keble, Artist or Machine? - An investigation into the paradoxical relationship between sport and creativity * Tim Vickery, Alternate Title - The lessons sports journalists can draw from the Monkees --------------- Fiction --------------- * Iain Macintosh, The Quantum of Bobby - After his exile in Qatar, Bobby Manager returns to English football. Or does he…? ------------------------- Greatest Games ------------------------- * Rob Smyth, England 1 West Germany 1* - World Cup semi-final, 4 July 1990, Stadio delle Alpi, Turin ----------------- Eight Bells ----------------- * Michael Yokhin, Non-identical twins - A selection of twins who looked the same but played very differently

The Blizzard - The Football Quarterly: Issue Twelve

This is the story of the greatest achievement in the history of international football. After decades of failure, Spain won the European Championship in 2008 andthen the World Cup in 2010. At Euro 2012 they became the first team to win three consecutive tournament titles. Graham Hunter was inside the dressing room as the players celebrated after the finals of the World Cup and Euro 2012. His access-all-areas pass at all three tournaments has resulted in remarkable eyewitness accounts and new interviews with star players and the men behind the scenes. Across every day of La Roja’s treble, the author takes you on to the training ground; on the team bus; into the canteen; inside the hotels and on to the pitch. You’ll hear the team talks that inspired Spain to victory plus the inside stories from Fernando Torres, Xavi, Iker Casillas, David Villa, Cesc Fàbregas, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué and the others behind an unprecedented era.

Spain: The Inside Story of La Roja's Historic Treble

FC Barcelona are the greatest football team in the world, the greatest for a generation and possibly the greatest of all time. This is the inside story of how the team came to redefine how the game is played, told by the journalist closer to it than any other. This edition contains a new epilogue reflecting on the departure of Pep Guardiola and Spain's victory at Euro 2012.

Barça

BARCELONA are the greatest football team in the world, the greatest for a generation and possibly the greatest of all time. This is the untold inside story of how the best and most loved football team in the world came to redefine how the game is played. We start with the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley, the game that ended the debate about whether Barcelona were the greatest team in the world and began a new one: are they the best ever? We are inside the winning dressing room and inside the mind of the team's coach, Pep Guardiola. From there, the focus is on each of the iconic personalities of this team, telling its story through them, from their genesis in the late 1980s to their coronation in London: Guardiola; his mentor, Johan Cruyff; Xavi; Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer of all time.

Barça: The Making of the Greatest Team in the World

Graham Hunter

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