The Beautiful Game — Alan Gibbons

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 grandad 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 experienced 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 men who blazed a trail in the UK, this book is ideal to engage reluctant reading football fans.