Bamboo Goalposts: One Man’s Quest to Teach the People’s Republic of China to Love Football
By Rowan Simons
Macmillan £14.99 400 pages
FT bookshop price: £11.99

Twenty years ago Rowan Simons arrived in China as a student on a year’s exchange. He quickly decided that with so much energy being unleashed around him, it would be a shame to return to Leeds University to read Tang poetry. So he ditched his degree and set up home in Beijing. The latest western missionary-entrepreneur in China, Simons has been trying – largely in vain – to get the Chinese to play football ever since.