The cover image selected for writer David Peace’s re-telling of the Munich Disaster depicts Bobby Charlton in cardigan, tie and smart trousers, dribbling a football up a terraced backstreet in his home village of Ashington, Northumberland, as three spellbound boys look on.
He had returned there to come to terms with the death of so many friends in the crash and there was clamour for interviews. Appearing for the photograph was as much as he could possibly bear.
The book’s early pages capture the apocalyptic vision which confronted him when he first opened his eyes amid the slush of Munich-Reim Airport’s runway; a vision which would still have been raw as he kicked that brown ball down Ashington’s Beatrice Street.