A football book was my Real goal

Richard Fitzpatrick combined his love of both writing and soccer in a book. Here he explains how he went about doing it

MY second book, El Clásico, is about the rivalry between two of the world’s greatest soccer teams — Barcelona and Real Madrid.

I was drawn to the subject because I moved to Barcelona in Feb 2010, and because it illuminates Spain’s cultural and political life. Their sporting dual is a proxy war for ancient hatreds that reached a bloody climax with the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s; though their global fan bases and relentless corporatism have diluted the internecine factor.