Books and Arts; Book Review;

Spanish football;Well red

How Spain learned to play the beautiful game;

La Roja: How Soccer Conquered Spain and How Spanish Soccer Conquered the World. By Jimmy Burns.

In football, timing counts: it makes the difference between a brilliant tackle and a red card, or a smartly taken goal and a raised offside flag. Jimmy Burns's publishers did not have to think too hard about when “La Roja”, his history of Spanish football, should appear: just before the European football championship, which kicks off on June 8th. The Spanish team won last time, in 2008, and are favourites to win again this year.

Mr Burns starts and finishes his account with Spain's victory in the 2010 World Cup. That and the European win two years before put an end to a sorry pattern of underachievement. Spain had not won a major trophy since 1964. For years their playing lacked harmony. Footballers from Barcelona and Real Madrid, Spain's two dominant clubs, fought like dogs in domestic matches. But with wise leadership from successive coaches, a brilliant generation of players is now producing flowing, winning football in the national colours.

In the 19th century British engineers and managers had brought the game to the mining towns of southern Spain and to the industrialising north. The tale quickly became a Spanish one—in the early days, with a strong Basque flavour. Athletic Bilbao provided the core of the team that won the silver medal in the 1920 Olympics in a hard, fast style known as La Furia.

Much of the book deals with regional stories and rivalries. Mr Burns, born a stone's throw from Real's stadium but a Barca fan and an author of books about both clubs, traces their complicated interconnections with Spanish politics—notably, the civil war and the dictatorship of General Franco. It is a delicate task, involving the links between Barca and Catalan nationalism, Franco's use of the game for political ends and the intricate links between Basque nationalism, football and the Catholic church. Mr Burns, who has reported on the land of his birth for many years, threads his way skilfully through it.

Britain's pioneers are gone and the national team may rule the world, but Spanish football has been continually refreshed by foreigners. Tours to and from South America taught Spaniards a thing or two in the 1920s. Real's wonder-team of the 1950s was led by Alfredo Di Stéfano, an Argentine, and Ferenc Puskas, a Hungarian. The most exciting player today is another Argentine, Lionel Messi (although he joined Barca as a boy). Mr Burns enthuses about all these and more—notably a Dutchman who played and coached Barca and remains a huge influence. Any football-mad reader will envy the author who can write: “The first time I met Johan Cruyff…”

Like many a football team, however, the book is let down a little by its finishing. Even the modern photos are in grainy black and white. Mr Cruyff is pictured in the orange strip of the Netherlands rather than Barca's red and blue. Arriving at Real, a clichéd David Beckham “like a proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, calmly ran the gauntlet of the world's media”. Nevertheless, Mr Burns shows that there is far more to tell about Spanish football than today's success on the field.