From the publisher:
A Season on the Med: Riviera Football in Italy and France (With a Trip to Athens for Stan) is a story of football where the sun always shines - with a difference. In the wake of Brexit, writer Alex Wade decamped to Menton, the last town on the Cote d'Azur. During a swim from France to Italy, he realised two things.
An array of great football clubs - from Nice, Marseille and Monaco to Genoa, Sampdoria and Spezia - were on his doorstep on the French and Italian Rivieras. Plus his hero, Queens Park Rangers talisman Stan Bowles, once played on the Med. Wade embarked on a journey of discovery to experience Riviera football over the 2021/22 season, with two questions in mind.
Is football on the Med more laid-back, languid and amiable than elsewhere? And could he make it to Athens in a tribute to Bowles? Eloquently written with a blend of reportage, travelogue and memoir, A Season on the Med ends unexpectedly inland, in Brumano, Italy, as Wade captures the spirit of Riviera football and grapples with the meaning of heroes, and home.
The author:
Alex Wade's first book, Wrecking Machine, was a Sunday Times Sports Book of the Week. Wade went on to write two acclaimed books on surfing, and a novel, Flack's Last Shift. In A Season on the Med he returns to his first love, football, but he doesn't just chronicle his experience of going to games along the French and Italian Rivieras. Instead, Wade, a lawyer as well as a writer and journalist, probes the nature and meaning of hero-worship.
---