The pleasure of the ball is a pleasure of the whole, as one of the texts in this book states. This is how far one can go when engaging with football in a literary way. The book is an invitation to Ukraine and an invitation to a football match; it invites encounters with kicking priest candidates, KGB officers and mafia bosses, drunken ex-professionals, and ordinary fans caught up in football fever. Literature surrounding football, just in time for the 2012 European Championship co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine: Eleven authors in search of a football tell eleven stories from Ukraine.