The Barcelona Complex

The Barcelona Complex PDF Author: Simon Kuper
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593297733
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all thirty-two NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is “More than a club.” But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club’s two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time. Messi joined Barça at age thirteen and, more than anyone, has been the engine and standard-bearer of Barcelona’s glory. But his era is coming to an end—and with it, a once-in-a-lifetime golden run. This book charts Barça’s rise and fall. Like many world-beating organizations, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders access to the Camp Nou, its legendary home stadium. But after decades of writing about the sport and the club, Kuper was given access to the inner sanctum and the people behind the scenes who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top. Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond soccer to understand FC Barcelona as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.

The Barcelona Complex

The Barcelona Complex PDF Author: Simon Kuper
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593297733
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book

Book Description
With rare and unrivaled access, bestselling coauthor of Soccernomics and longtime Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper tells the story of how FC Barcelona became the most successful club in the world—and how that era is now ending FC Barcelona is not just the world’s highest grossing sports club, it is simply one of the most influential organizations on the planet. At last count, it had approximately 214 million social media followers, more than any other sports club except Real Madrid CF—and by one earlier measure, more than all thirty-two NFL teams combined. It has more in common with multinational megacompanies like Netflix or small nation-states than it does with most soccer teams. No wonder its motto is “More than a club.” But it was not always so. In the past three decades, Barcelona went from a regional team to a global powerhouse, becoming a model of sustained excellence and beautiful soccer, and a consistent winner of championships. Simon Kuper unravels exactly how this transformation took place, paying special attention to the club’s two biggest stars, Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi, who is arguably the greatest soccer player of all time. Messi joined Barça at age thirteen and, more than anyone, has been the engine and standard-bearer of Barcelona’s glory. But his era is coming to an end—and with it, a once-in-a-lifetime golden run. This book charts Barça’s rise and fall. Like many world-beating organizations, FC Barcelona closely guards its secrets, granting few outsiders access to the Camp Nou, its legendary home stadium. But after decades of writing about the sport and the club, Kuper was given access to the inner sanctum and the people behind the scenes who strive daily to keep Barcelona at the top. Erudite, personal, and capturing all the latest upheavals, his portrait of this incredible institution goes beyond soccer to understand FC Barcelona as a unique social, cultural, and political phenomenon.

Fear and Loathing in La Liga

Fear and Loathing in La Liga PDF Author: Sid Lowe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446496635
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
‘A history of modern Spain told through one of world football's most intense rivalries’ Independent ‘Sports Book of the Year’ Sunday Times It’s Messi vs Ronaldo, it’s Catalonia vs Castilla. It’s the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco’s fascists. It’s majestic goals and mesmerising skills, red cards and bench brawls. It’s the best two teams on the planet going face to face and toe to toe. It’s more than a game. It’s a war. It’s Barcelona vs Real Madrid. Only, it’s not that simple. From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames. By exploring the history, politics, culture, economics and language, while never forgetting the drama on the pitch, Lowe demonstrates the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these two football giants. In doing so he reveals the human story behind this explosive rivalry.

Barcelona

Barcelona PDF Author: Robert Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679743839
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
A monumentally informed and irresistibly opinionated guide to the most un-Spanish city in Spain, from the bestselling author of The Fatal Shore. In these pages, Robert Hughes scrolls through Barcelona's often violent history; tells the stories of its kings, poets, magnates, and revolutionaries; and ushers readers through municipal landmarks that range from Antoni Gaudi's sublimely surreal cathedral to a postmodern restaurant with a glass-walled urinal. The result is a work filled with the attributes of Barcelona itself: proportion, humor, and seny—the Catalan word for triumphant common sense.

Barcelona and Madrid

Barcelona and Madrid PDF Author: Aránzazu Ascunce Arenas
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1611484251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
For hundreds of years, Barcelona and Madrid have shared a deep rivalry. Throughout history, they have competed in practically every aspect of social life, sport, politics, and culture. While competition between cities is commonplace in many nations around the world, in the case of Barcelona and Madrid it has been, on occasion, excessively antagonistic. Over time they have each tried to demonstrate that one was more modern than the other, or more avant-garde, or richer, or more athletic, and so on. Fortunately, the Spain of today is a democracy and every nation and region of the State has the liberty to act. As such, the rivalry between these two capitals has become productive not only for the cities themselves, but also for Spain as a whole. One hundred years ago, at the onset of the Historical Avant-Garde in Spain, the connections between Barcelona and Madrid consisted of a complicated web of politics, friendships, publications, and inter-art collaborations. Over the last century, the antagonistic relationship between these two cultural capitals has been dismissed as simply a fact of life and thereby scholars, for the most part, have focused only on Barcelona or Madrid when addressing this cultural moment. By delving deep into the myriad of cultural and political complexities that surround these two cities from the onset of Futurism (1909) to the arrival of Surrealism in Spain (1929), a complex social and cultural network is revealed. Networking between artists, poets, journalists and thinkers connected avant-garde Barcelona and Madrid, thereby creating synergy for this artistic and literary movement. In a hybrid, transdisciplarian, translingual and historical approach using a wide range of visual and textual artifacts, the complexity of interactions described here opens our imagination to new ways of thinking about culture.

Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity

Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity PDF Author: Joan Ramon Resina
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804758328
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Barcelona's Vocation of Modernity is a study of the emergence and development of the cultural image of the Iberian peninsula’s foremost modern city.

The Girl From Barcelona

The Girl From Barcelona PDF Author: Peter Woodbridge
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1777573521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
It wasn’t meant to happen. One of his rare mistakes. Daniela’s parents and brother weren’t meant to be there. Raphael Robles lies to his young niece about their deaths. For him, the cover-up is easy; he’s one of Spain’s top counterterrorism cops. Years later, living at his house, Daniela discovers the truth. They were killed in the Atocha train station bombing. She stumbles over a dark and fiendish secret: her uncle is a traitor. He’s operating deep undercover for al-Rashid, the emerging leader of al-Qaeda and architect of the massacre. Bent on revenge, she bides her time. Her fiance is murdered near the Sagrada Familia. Catalan police detectives investigate—immediately clashing with Madrid’s federal forces, who know a lot more than they’re admitting. DI Antonio Valls suspects a cover-up but is unprepared for Daniela—and the shocking events that are about to unfold. The Girl from Barcelona is the first book in the Daniela’s Story trilogy. Based on the Arabic saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” her journey weaves an intricate web of espionage, suspense and deception.

El Clasico: Barcelona v Real Madrid

El Clasico: Barcelona v Real Madrid PDF Author: Richard Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408171090
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Real Madrid versus Barcelona is regarded by many as the most captivating fixture in world football. But it is not only the on-pitch battles that have forged their rivalry. From General Franco and bloody civil war to the Catalan city of Barcelona's lukewarm reaction to Spain's recent World Cup and European Championship triumphs, bitterness is never far from the surface. In El Clásico, Richard Fitzpatrick charts the key political and historical flashpoints between the two clubs. With exclusive interviews with key figures, including Luís Figo, Hristo Stoichkov, Joan Laporta and Vicente del Bosque, El Clásico is the definitive guide to football's greatest feud.

Barça

Barça PDF Author: Graham Hunter
Publisher: BackPage Press
ISBN: 0956497152
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
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.

Complex Systems in Sport

Complex Systems in Sport PDF Author: Keith Davids
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136482156
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Complex systems in nature are those with many interacting parts, all capable of influencing global system outcomes. There is a growing body of research that has modeled sport performance from a complexity sciences perspective, studying the behavior of individual athletes and sports teams as emergent phenomena which self-organise under interacting constraints. This book is the first to bring together experts studying complex systems in the context of sport from across the world to collate core theoretical ideas, current methodologies and existing data into one comprehensive resource. It offers new methods of analysis for investigating representative complex sport movements and actions at an individual and team level, exploring the application of methodologies from the complexity sciences in the context of sports performance and the organization of sport practice. Complex Systems in Sport is important reading for any advanced student or researcher working in sport and exercise science, sports coaching, kinesiology or human movement.

Blood Crime

Blood Crime PDF Author: Sebastià Alzamora
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1616956283
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
It is 1936, and Barcelona burns as the Spanish Civil War takes over. The city is a bloodbath. Yet in all this death, the murders of a Marist monk and a young boy, drained of their blood, are strange enough to catch a police inspector's attention. The Marist brothers of the murdered monk are being persecuted; meanwhile, a convent of Capuchin nuns hides in plain sight, trading favours with the military police to stay alive. In their midst is a thirteen-year-old novice who stumbles into the clutches of the murderer. Can she escape in this city of no happy endings?