Sports don’t do well in fiction. The drama within the game and the drama outside the game address many of the benchmarks of good fiction: conflict, suffering, and achievement to name a few. Yet, sport occupies its world and fiction its world. Don DeLillo’s Underworld begins with an exceptional fictionalized account of Bobby Thomson’s 1951 Shot Heard’ Round the World, but the remaining 750 pages veer away from baseball.

The game might be changing. David Peace’s latest novel Red or Dead is decidedly about sport, soccer, and might win some literary prizes