A groundbreaking new series from two bestselling writers that teaches you about the world through the prism of football.

The first book is packed with awesome true stories, real science and fascinating facts and will make you laugh loads. When do footballers poo? Can you play football on Mars? What is a magic sponge? You will find the answers to these questions and more in chapters on subjects such as history, geography, biology and maths.

Illustrated throughout with hilarious cartoons and filled with laugh-out-loud gags this is the perfect book for any boy or girl who loves football. Your coaches at Football School, Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton, are journalists, broadcasters and award-winning science and sports writers. Their knowledge, enthusiasm and engaging writing make them the perfect team to teach you how to score with your head.

Being a book blogger you would have thought that I would have managed to pass on my love of reading to my children. Unfortunately I didn’t. Only one of my three boys enjoys reading. The other two you have to force to sit and read. So upon receiving this book I asked my youngest son (the one who enjoys reading), to read it and tell me what he thought.

He started straight away and immediately I could hear him giggling to himself, apparently over a section to do with ‘poo’, taught in biology.

The book is split into school subjects and teaches children about those subjects, using football as its theme. Every now and again my son would come to me and tell me about the different subjects and what was happening, including a grizzly part about an old football-like game where if you were on the losing team, you had your head chopped off!

The book made my son laugh out loud, it made him take himself off to bed early so that he could sit and read before he went to sleep, and it made him engage with me about what he had read. All in all, three reasons why I am really impressed with this book.

According to my son, Football School is brilliant and a must read for any football fan, even grown-ups will like it – well what more can I say!!

My mum was born in Hungary, which gave me a head start: Hungarians are traditionally very good at maths.

I was born in Oxford, but by the time I had learned to count we were living in Edinburgh. Aged 12, the family moved to Southampton and five years later I was at Oxford University reading Mathematics and Philosophy.

At university I edited Cherwell, the student paper. After graduating, I joined the Brighton Evening Argus as a trainee reporter. I moved to London and the Guardian gave me a job in its newsroom. Eventually, I ended up as the paper’s South America correspondent in Rio de Janeiro.

During my five years in Brazil I wrote Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, and also presented the BBC TV series Inside Out Brazil.

My return to London was also a return to mathematics. Alex’s Adventures in Numberland was published in 2010 and Alex Through the Looking-Glass in 2014. I now divide my time between science popularization and writing about Brazilian football.

www.alexbellos.com
@alexbellos

Ben Lyttleton is a journalist, broadcaster and football consultant. He has advised clubs and national federations on strategy, and businesses on developing new products for the football market.

His book Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Penalty Kick came out in the UK in 2014. His latest book Football School was released in September 2016.

He lives in London.

@benlyt