“Goalkeeper, / Don’t stick your nose into the penalty area! / Poet, / don’t get involved in politics!”, wrote Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 1989 in the poem “Lev Yashin,” read at the Dynamo stadium in front of 60,000 spectators before the start of the match in honor of the legendary goalkeeper. By referring to this poem, the book pays tribute to the famous hero of not only Soviet but also world football and points to the significance of football that goes beyond the sporting spectacle. The collection is addressed both to connoisseurs and fans of the game, and to readers interested in the football culture of Eastern Europe. It contains articles about this popular sport in literature, history, politics, art and everyday life. The book covers the space of Russia and Ukraine, Poland and Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Latvia and Hungary, Germany and Austria. We are talking about legendary football players - Lev Yashin, Valery Lobanovsky, Ferenc Puskás, about football fans in Poland and their traces in the modern city, about football in cinema and about the relationship between football and architecture and urban planning. The book includes a selection of short literary texts by authors from different countries of Eastern, Central and South-Eastern Europe, most of which are published for the first time in Russian.