Almost every soccer book includes a brief taxi cab interview. For some reason, these interviews serve as the "voice of the people" and seldom offer much insight. Also, authors normally exclude the name of the cabbie, date of interview, and any means to contact the cabbie to confirm said interview happened. The result? A whole trove of research that cannot be peer reviewed. Tsk tsk.

Thus, in researching my second book, I had to just blindly follow convention. Taxi-cab research is a must. I consulted a cabbie in the US...via twitter. I asked Dmitry Samarov, author of "Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab," what he thought of Real Madrid & Barcelona. He said that "he didn't know." Conclusion? Lots of American cabbies have no opinion on the historic Barcelona-Real Madrid rivalry. Surely, this is super important (even if it may not make it into the book).

Samarov's book is excellent, though. Check it out here: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/boo...