Author(s): Sebastian Abbot

Football

Over the past decade, an audacious programme called Football Dreams has held trials for millions of 13-year-old boys across Africalooking for football's next superstars. Led by the Spanish scout who helped launch Lionel Messi's career at Barcelona and funded by thedesert kingdom of Qatar, the programme has chosen a handful of boys each year to train to become professionals - a process over athousand times more selective than getting into Harvard.In The Away Game, reporter Sebastian Abbot follows a small group of the boys as they are discovered on dirt fields across Africa, join theglittering academy in Doha where they train, and compete for the chance to gain fame and fortune at Europe's top clubs.Abbot masterfully weaves together the dramatic story of the boys' journey with an exploration of the art and science of trying to spot talentat such a young age. Richly reported and deeply moving, The Away Game is set against the geopolitical backdrop of Qatar's rise from animpoverished patch of desert to an immensely rich nation determined to buy a place on the international stage. It is an unforgettable storyof the joy and pain these talented African boys experience as they chase their dreams in a dizzying world of rich Arab sheikhs, moneyhungryagents, and football-mad European fans.