European Football Yearbook launched in Monaco

The 2012/13 edition of the European Football Yearbook is launched today in Monaco in advance of the UEFA Champions League group stage draw.

The 25th edition – and the sixth with UEFA.com backing – provides comprehensive coverage of the past season, reviewing all 2011/12 UEFA competitions plus those run by the 53 member associations in exhaustive and exclusive detail.

A must-have for all followers of European football, it contains masses of facts and figures, and there is plenty to read, with narrative reviews accompanying the statistics for each competition and country. The book is also a visual treat, with colour photographs and graphics embellishing its thousand-plus pages.

Mike Hammond has been the editor since the yearbook's first appearance back in 1988 and is thrilled to celebrate the publication's silver jubilee. "I am extremely proud to have reached this landmark," he said. "I could never have imagined 25 years ago that the European Football Yearbook would still be going strong and that I would still be editing it.

"The book's continued survival in this digital age of increasingly instantaneous communication and fact-finding is, I hope and believe, down to its quality, reliability, readability and exclusivity. 'Unique and comprehensive' was the slogan we used for the first edition, and if you turn to the back cover of this edition, you will see those three words still standing proud today."

A thorough review of UEFA EURO 2012 leads the section dedicated to the UEFA competitions, and there are in-depth pieces on the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League as well as resumes of the 2011/12 youth, women's and futsal events.

Each UEFA member association's season is revisited in fine detail, with national team results and match-by-match player appearances followed by a club-by-club section where all the top-division teams' league results and player appearances are listed. League tables and domestic cup results are also included along with club honours, stadiums and directory information.

A special chapter is devoted to the yearbook's top 100 players of the season, and there are maps, club locations, logos and national team kits in a section that focuses on the clubs qualified for the major 2012/13 UEFA competitions.

The yearbook has something for everyone. Chelsea FC's UEFA Champions League-winning manager Roberto Di Matteo, who has contributed the foreword, writes: "The European Football Yearbook does a fantastic job of recording everything that happened during a memorable season."

The book will be available to buy in bookshops and online in mid-to-late September, and can be pre-ordered at Amazon.co.uk.