Wonder Goal!

Foreman is a ‘beautiful game’ man. There’s no room in this picture book for the sleaze, the professional foul, the greed, the violence and lewdness of the football terraces. This is the pure romance of the young dreamer who moves from being the new boy on the team running out to play on the vast acres of pitches on a Sunday to scoring in the World Cup – watched by another who dreamed the same dream, his dad. His colours work subtly and strongly for dreams; from the muted tones of the boy’s bedroom, walls covered with posters, to the brilliance of the national flags streaming from the terraces of a mighty stadium. These are the flags of all nations and Foreman’s endpapers are ‘pages from my sketchbook’ showing lads – and the odd monk – kicking footballs about from China to Yucatan by way of Tibet and the Golan Heights (the goal is chalked on the side of a dead tank). This then is the beautiful, the universal game. For dreaming boys everywhere – including the one playing on his own all day long who used to shout YES! a thousand times an hour as he thudded the ball against the wall of the alley next to our house.