A Beautiful Game

Wherever you are on earth, it s only a matter of time before you will come across children playing football. Across every continent, football is a common language and a culture shared: a joy, a passion, an escape and an affirmation of identity understood and celebrated.

For this unique collaborative project, football writer Tom Watt talked to over forty of the world s top footballers about growing up and falling in love with the game: Argentina s Lionel Messi and Brazil s Gilberto Silva; England s David James and Australia's Mark Schwarzer; Italy s Fabio Cannavaro; France s Franck Ribery; Japan's Shunsuke Nakamura and the world s most famous player, David Beckham, to name just a few.

A BEAUTIFUL GAME tells their stories, in the players own words; stories of boys who would grow up to be heroes for a new generation of young players and fans. They look back to their childhoods: to their family homes, to their schoolrooms, to the friends they grew up with and to the places where they first played the game that has made them stars.