James Riordan (10 October 1936 – 10 February 2012) was an English novelist, broadcaster, sports historian, association football player and Russian scholar.He was well known for his work Sport in Soviet Society, the first academic look at sport in the Soviet Union, and for his children's novels.He claims to have been the first Briton to play football in the USSR, playing for FC Spartak Moscow in 1963.Born in Portsmouth in 1936, James Riordan learned to speak Russian during National Service training in the Royal Air Force from 1955 to 1957. In 1960, he graduated in Russian Studies at the University of Birmingham, before qualifying as a teacher at the London Institute of Education. Wikipedia
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