Football and its fiction

Football, arguably the world’s most popular sport, generates a proportionate volume of related writing. Within this landscape, works of fiction are seemingly rare. This has led to negative perceptions around the made up stories of football, which has seen them relegated to the game’s periphery. In this chapter, key texts and key writers will be drawn into a consideration of the historical context. This provides the platform for an exploration of common elements and conventions, which, in light of theories of genre studies, underline football fiction’s exhibition of marked generic qualities. In advancing the understanding of football fiction as a collective body, the chapter opens an important discussion for continued research and consideration of the works in generic terms.