Red Odyssey: An FC Bayern Fan Journey (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781540647382)

Having started out as a potential magazine/blog article, Red Odyssey is a thirty-six year project in the making, charting the author's relationship with Germany's biggest and most well-known football team, FC Bayern München.

Having fallen in love with FC Bayern in 1981 as a nine year old, the author charts the events season by season.

During the 1980s, FC Bayern were flying high in Germany but victim of painful European Cup final defeats in 1982 and 1987. Meanwhile the author, one of the few supporters of the Bavarian club in the United Kingdom, was performing late-night television-watching escapades at boarding school in order to catch five minutes of potted highlights.

Being an FC Bayern fan in the late 1980s and early 1990s was far from a glory hunt, and all of the pain as well as the glory is covered in equal depth with no emotions spared. The solid 1980s were followed by the painful nadir of the early 1990s, with names like Norwich City, BK 1903 Copenhagen and SpVgg Vestenbergsgreuth appearing like ghosts from a dark and horrible past. Then would come the agonising Champions League defeat against Manchester United in 1999.

As fans of the club will already know and readers less familiar with the subject will discover, FC Bayern have almost made a habit of fighting back to overcome the pain. Two years after that last-gasp defeat in Barcelona, they would exact the perfect revenge on both United and their other old rivals Real Madrid before claiming that title in a dramatic penalty shootout against Valencia in Milan's San Siro. It was the final chapter in a dramatic season that had also seen them clinch the Bundesliga title in dramatic circumstances, leaving fans of rivals Schalke 04 shedding blue and bitter tears.

As FC Bayern developed as a growing international brand and the German game became more popular outside its homeland following the massive development of satellite television, it became a lot easier to watch FC Bayern play. The dark days of scratching for brief highlights were all but forgotten, with almost every match available live.

The Champions League triumph in 2001 was not to be the beginning of a new era of continental dominance for FC Bayern, and the club and its supporters would have to wait over a decade for its next victory in Europe's premier club competition - but when it came, it was a moment of history as the club claimed their first-ever treble.

By now FC Bayern were being lauded as the best football team in the world, a team up there with the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona in the battle for continental dominance.

Red Odyssey has been written by an FC Bayern fan for FC Bayern fans, but there is plenty for everybody else who has a love for German football.