SuitabookFoul Play: Off Side
Tom Palmer
- Reading
- Read alongside the football mystery, pausing when promises, money or authority change someone’s choices. Afterwards, separate what characters believe from what the story shows, then explore Fairtrade and football governance together.
- Themes
- Opportunity and exploitation: Kofi is offered a place in an English Premier League setting but is brought under false pretences by an agent and left in an unfamiliar country. The deceptive agent and exploitation are presented as problems that Danny tries to challenge, rather than as acceptable routes to success.
- Power and ownership: Danny investigates an anonymous foreign buy-out of City FC while supporters had been preparing to buy the club themselves. The book presents competing or mixed signals about this.
- Fairness and consumption: Kofi comes from a family of cocoa farmers, and the story is associated with Fairtrade and questions about where products come from. The book appears to connect football with the wider journey of cocoa and global trade, inviting attention to fairness rather than treating sport as isolated.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready to talk about a young Ghanaian player being deceived, abandoned or endangered, alongside corruption, poverty and pressure surrounding football. The intensity and final resolution are not fully clear.