50 Way to Score a Goal and other football poems by Brian Bilston

I have been a fan of football almost all my life and have read my fair share of biographies and other footballing books, including Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, The Football Factory by John King and the motivational book by Marcus Rashford You Are a Champion. However, nothing tops this book. Seriously.

This is a book of football poems looking at all aspects of the beautiful game, from the stress of being chosen to play, the role of wingers, to being on the bench and the half-time satsuma. Who is better - Ronaldo or Messi? 

The book is (mostly) from a child's perspective and I remember how I used to try to speak with as many football terms and players names as I could manage to fit into a sentence, as in the poem Total Football. There is a lot of word play in may of the poems, re-writes of football songs and the Match of the Day theme tune as well as rules of the game and aspects of it, such as The Language of Football and the dreaded own goal in O.G. and the potentially equally dreaded referee in A Cautionary Tale. Keepie-uppies is a visual poem that you have to look at as is the very true Life Cycle of a Football Manager.

Bilson is unlikely to  become the Poet Laureate based on this book, but, for any football fan these sometimes silly verses capture the spirit of the game. The match day routines, The Lucky Bobble Hat and The Magic Sponge are part of the nostalgia of football fans. Better than poems about childhood holidays. Highly recommended for any young fan or not so young.


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Published by Macmillan Children's Books; Main Market edition on 27 May 2021.