TITLE = European Football: A Fan's Handbook AUTHOR = The Rough Guide, Peterjon Cresswell (ed) PRICE = 13.99 pounds list, US$ 19.95 SIZE = 604 pages YEAR = 1998 SOURCE = www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com RATING = 5 stars
This is the book that launched Abseits!! A seminal work in soccer
literature. The main weakness of this book is that you need an extra 1,000
pages. Perhaps Rough Guide will expand to individual country or
regional volumes, in which case that need will be met.
This is basically a survey of European Football, country by country, with
brief chapters on the history and profiles of the major clubs. The authors
usually pick the largest cities in each country, and thereby manage to
capture some info on the smaller clubs in the metropolis as well.
Because the survey is less focused and detailed, it's not as good as the
Rough Guide's English Football, but it's still superb.