Barrington Stoke: The Beautiful Game Award-winning author by Alan Gibbons (author) and Chris Chalik (illustrator)

Fact and fiction intertwine in this heartfelt tribute to football, honouring victims of Hillsborough and other disasters, and celebrating trailblazing black players.

At an Old Trafford game, Lennie hears Man U fans chanting about Hillsborough. Enraged, he joins in with a retaliatory chant about the Munich Disaster of ‘58. Appalled, his dad and granddad take Lennie on a whistlestop tour of the dark side of the beautiful game. Dad and Grandad know only too well the human cost of fan violence and official negligence, having experience racism in football fandom and survived the Hillsborough disaster.Interwoven with lots of facts about the history of football, the great disasters of the twentieth century and the black footballers who blazed a trail in the UK, this book is ideal to engage reluctant reading football fans. Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant and dyslexic readers aged 8+