From Tashkent with Love

From Tashkent With Love is a tale of courage, heartbreak and glory spanning four decades. It tells the remarkable story of Cardiff City's football adventures across Europe in the premier club competition for Welsh teams at that time, the European Cup Winners' Cup. From the thrilling 1.0 victory against the mighty Real Madrid at Ninian Park in 1971, to the heartbreak of a last minute 3.2 home defeat in the semi-final against FC Hamburg in 1968, Cardiff's 24 Cup Winner's Cup games are all recalled by the best-selling author Mario Risoli who interviewed over 70 former players in the writing of this comprehensive book. Their 40-year European odyssey saw the Bluebirds face some of the biggest names in continental football - Sporting Lisbon, Real Zaragoza, FC Porto and Dynamo Berlin, yet perhaps their finest hour came in 1968 in their epic and pulsating quarter-final tie against the crack Soviet side Torpedo Moscow. With the game bizarrely switched from Moscow to Tashkent, in what in now Uzbekistan, City were forced to make a remarkable 8,000-mile round trip to the borderlands of China and Afghanistan, a journey which still survives as the furthest distance travelled by any British club in a European cup competition.