Here we have a football book, which is also a true crime book, one so outlandish and absurd that if it had been filmed as a piece of fiction it would have been derided for its lack of realism. Central to the book is Pablo Escobar, a man who was more complex than I appreciated. We follow his life from his early days living in poverty, from being a fruit thief to becoming a car thief, into the world of narcotics and his ultimate demise in a shoot out whilst on the run. He was self-styled as a man of the people and it seems that he was well liked among the poor, following Juvenal’s conceit of ‘bread and circuses’ only here he gave them football instead of the circus. Owning a football club was seen as a great way of laundering drug money and all the drug cartels got involved resulting in huge sums of dirty money being invested and a fierce rivalry developing. This worked for a while but in the end so much money was coming in that it was stashed, buried and hidden away. Treasure hunters will be looking for the missing cash for years to come. Escobar also built houses for the poor and during this period we have the paradoxical situation of doing good at home whilst poisoning people in USA with cocaine. There is that famous story (almost certainly apocryphal) about a hotel worker seeing George Best in bed with a couple of blonds, surrounded by cash and champagne asking, “here did it all go wrong George”. Well, where did it all go wrong for Pablo? Simply an extradition treaty between Columbia and the US was signed. First Pablo tried politics but when that failed, he resorted to terrorism and any semblance of being a modern Robin Hood evaporated. Amazingly at one point he agreed to a period of incarceration, but on his terms. He built his own ‘prison’ and provided his own security. This enabled him to smuggle in professional teams for football matches against the inmates who surprisingly (or not) usually won. Being a book about football, inevitably the events of some matches are described. I’m a match going fan and keen reader, but I find it difficult to visualise such passages, here they are used to add flavour. The reader doesn’t need to be a keen football watcher to enjoy this most outlandish of real-life stories. The writing style is clear, concise and well balanced. Pablo Escobar clearly became a deranged and disturbing man, but he is portrayed with some nuance rather than being flat out judgemental. His crimes are not shied away from or glorified, and I am sure readers will see parallels with the Mafia killings of judges and magistrates. It is also important to examine his crimes against the chaotic politics and economics of South American states.