FC Foot: The career you never had

Before talking about the book, what is your relationship with football?

Olivier Bron: I come from a background where football was something we mostly watched from a distance. My turning point was France 98. Like many people, I was swept up in that huge wave of popular enthusiasm. After that, I became an obsessive reader of sports media. Football is an endless source of stories, anecdotes and characters… That’s also where this long-standing desire to create a Choose Your Own Adventure book about football came from.

Timothée Ostermann: For me, it’s almost the opposite. I started playing football when I was five and played for more than twenty years. It’s a family story: my three older brothers played, and so did my grandfather. Before FC Foot, I had already created Football District, a graphic novel about amateur football, and I worked for seven years at So Foot. Football is really part of the way I tell stories.

How did the idea for FC Foot come about?

Olivier Bron: I had been thinking for a very long time about making a Choose Your Own Adventure book about football. Then Tim came along at exactly the right moment. He ticked every box: he understood football perfectly, he knew how to draw and how to tell stories. He was the ideal partner.

Timothée Ostermann: We started with a very simple fantasy: the dream we all had at some point, becoming a professional footballer. The story begins in front of an orphanage in Brazil and, depending on the reader’s choices, you can end up as a World Cup winner, a Ballon d’Or winner… or a comic book artist on a beach. Anything is possible.

Why was football such a perfect fit for the Choose Your Own Adventure format?

Olivier Bron: Because a footballer’s career can change in a single pass. An injury, a bad decision, a goal scored at the right moment, a transfer… There are constant turning points. We found it fascinating to put very thoughtful decisions and events that last only a few seconds — but can change an entire life — on the same level.

In a Choose Your Own Adventure book, you never know whether your choice will have an impact in the next minute or ten years later. That relationship with time fascinated us. It also comes from comics: between two panels, only a few seconds can pass… or several years.

The book is packed with references.

Timothée Ostermann: Absolutely. Our main source of inspiration was football itself. Something happens every single day. We started by creating a huge list of everything we wanted to include: iconic moves, scandals, anecdotes, cult moments, improbable situations…

We quickly realised there was far too much material. Football is so rich that we could have made a book twice as big.

Olivier Bron: The idea was that someone who doesn’t know every reference could still experience a genuine adventure. But if you’re a football fan, you can also have fun spotting dozens of hidden references.

The names of the players and clubs are all twisted versions of real ones.

Timothée Ostermann: That was something we had a lot of fun with. It’s also a tribute to the old football video games that didn’t have official licences. We all grew up with those strange fake names and, in a way, they’re part of football culture.

So we created characters who are often a mix of several players. Their name might remind you of one person, their haircut of another, their rolled-up sleeves of someone else. It’s almost a game within the game.

Visually, the book feels like a true declaration of love for football aesthetics.

Timothée Ostermann: Crests, shirts, badges… Those are the things I’ve always been passionate about. For the logos, I had a lot of fun merging completely opposite clubs. I always tried to start from codes that football fans instantly recognise, while giving them a slight twist.

I also watched a lot of Captain Tsubasa (Olive et Tom in France). Football manga remain a huge reference for me. The enormous pitches, impossible perspectives, completely crazy shots… I couldn’t avoid bringing those codes back.

Olivier Bron: Shirts and badges already tell stories by themselves. They’re almost characters in their own right.

Yet behind the humour, the book also tackles much more serious subjects.

Olivier Bron: When you love football, you have to accept a certain form of contradiction. You can be genuinely passionate about the sport while also seeing very clearly everything that is wrong around it.

We wanted to talk about mental health, racism, the pressure inside academies, women’s football… But without ever preaching. All of these things are part of a player’s possible journey.

Timothée Ostermann: We wanted to tell football in all its complexity. The funny, the beautiful, the ridiculous, the tragic… Everything coexists in this sport.

In the end, the goal of the book isn’t necessarily to become a Ballon d’Or winner?

Olivier Bron: Not really. What we hope above all is that readers will go through the adventure several times.

Timothée Ostermann: The pleasure comes from exploring. Trying another choice, discovering a new path, coming across a scene you had never seen before. We hid a huge number of things in the book. The more you replay it, the more new stories it reveals.

In the end, the book works a bit like a football career: you fall, you start again, you change direction… and you discover that the journey is often more interesting than the destination.