posted on 24 Apr 2018

Dream Team by Alan Gibbons

What makes a team a team? What is it that talented individuals need to turn them from people who only think about themselves and their own glory into team players who plan with each other in mind and share common goals? I suspect there are interminable business strategy conferences about this that cost delegates exorbitant amounts of money but if you get your hands on Alan Gibbons’ new book from the publisher, Barrington Stoke you’ll only have to pay the very modest sum of £6.99 to have some of these questions explored in a much more entertaining way.

Cairo is a really good young footballer who plays for East End United but he’s impetuous, hot tempered and inclined to be a bit selfish when he gets onto the football pitch. This isn’t helping his team who are struggling to gel together and need a leader on the pitch – the coach, Ayo, does his best to help them from the touchline but they just aren’t listening.

Ayo decides the boys need to learn what makes a team for themselves and suggests they go off to the library to find out what made great players from the past so good and how they worked for their teams. At first the boys are reluctant – reading's not their bag. But as the defeats mount they finally recognise they have to do something about it and discover to their surprise that history – even football history – has some valuable lessons for them.

Inspired by the examples of past great players and teams, the boys work out for themselves that they need a leader who they respect and a strategy for how to play and this turns out to be the pivotal moment when they stop being self-centred and start playing for each other.

You won’t be surprised to discover that success follows – but I’m going to leave you to find out how the games turn out in the build up to the championship decider.

Alan Gibbons is such a skilful writer when it comes to these football stories. He knows and loves his football but he also knows that inside stories like this he can smuggle in plenty of information that young readers might not go off to look for themselves. So we get short chapters dedicated to pen portraits of past great players under headings like ‘Todays Stars’, ‘Bad Boys’, ‘Flair Players’ or ‘Leaders On The Pitch’ that tell the story of football’s greats from Pele onwards.

And, of course, given that Gibbons’ is one of the country’s most redoubtable library anti-cuts campaigners he gets in a swipe at the vandalism of closing local libraries and a healthy chunk of propaganda about just how important they can be to young people like the ones in this story.

The book has some nice illustrative work by Chris Chalk whose black and white full and half page drawings have a similar feel to football story strips from the comic book genre – think Roy of the Rovers and you wont be too far off the mark.

Another good offering for reluctant readers and, as the sticker promises, it is ‘super readable’.

 

Terry Potter

April 2018