This is football comic-ery, but not as you know it. Welcome to the inimitable work of illustrator David Squires.

Football and comics. Once a hearty Saturday combination to match cartoons and cereal, in recent years they’ve drifted apart. Thankfully for us, Squires is here to change all that.

In The Illustrated History of Football, his first book, Squires relives some of football’s most glorious moments and meets its greatest figures. In a sport full of handsome paycheques and corporate sponsors, he also casts a critical eye over corrupt backroom workings and helps pierce football’s overblown balloon.

Funny, good-looking and preternaturally astute, this book is everything Sepp Blatter wishes he could be.