The Football Encyclopedia
Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton, illustrated by Spike Ferrell
Walker Books

Are you looking for a special book for a soccer-loving child? If so then this could be the answer; it comes from the same team that write the hugely popular Football School series and is illustrated in vibrant colour by Spike Ferrell.

Bellos and Lyttleton’s approach is to help readers comprehend the world through soccer thus enlarging their understanding of bigger issues such as national identity, gender equality, human rights and technology, as they peruse the book. There are five sections, each of which concludes with a quiz.

Section one, The Game includes the worldwide origins of the game in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania and a highly amusing visual timeline. There’s also a very clear explanation of how to play the game with its rules and laws – vital for a reviewer like myself whose knowledge of the game is pretty poor, as well as pages on shirts and other kit, the ball, and a final ‘gallery of the greats’.

The Clubs deals with football clubs in the UK and around the world, leagues, competitions, kit colours, mascots, stadiums, and a useful, interesting section on how clubs are structured and funded.
The third part begins with a spread documenting the birth of international football, followed by another on flags, pages on the World Cup, both men’s and women’s, the Euros and more. I love the spread presenting the various animal nicknames of some countries.
Next, the Football Family charts a possible path to becoming a professional player, then explains what it’s like so to be – this covers nutrition, resting and recovery;

we also learn about the role of a coach, the referee and tactics.
Finally, Football Everywhere underscores the authors’ conviction that football is a good starting point for learning, with ten sections examining football ‘through ten different lenses from numbers and language to technology and the future’.

Both full of information and highly entertaining, I envisage if this is put in a classroom, there will either be groups of children clamouring to read it together, or a queue of individuals needing to create a rota to feast their eyes on it.