It is my habit to take on foolish and ill advised ideas blending things I love. It’s why there’s a collage of Economist covers in my classroom, and why I use my old baseball card collection as bookmarks.

That’s my way of introducing a new and extremely niche idea of sharing lessons that connect classic literature to football and football to classic literature.

Here’s how it will work: I’ll read some of the works of a writer who has won the Nobel Prize in Literature (it may seem arbitrary, but it’s a short hand of world-wide writers who inspire people the same way soccer stars can).

We’ll meet the writer and see what connection–if any–they have to soccer

We’ll look at one or two of their famous pieces and write a bit about their lessons and themes.

We’ll connect the themes from the work to our lives and to the things we’ve been seeing on the pitch.

And finally we’ll slot the writer into a spot on the pitch 1-Goalkeeper to 11-Striker to create a silly little team (possibly even with photoshop if I can figure it out). Hopefully we’ll see enough to create a full squad (maybe more given the long history of the award).

For now I’m just aiming to do this six times a year (writing about the winners 100, 80, 60, 40, and 20 years ago, as well as this year’s honoree when they are announced in October). If time allows I’ll work on the ones from before 100 years ago, but I’m trying to do a lot of writing and reading, so let’s just settle down our expectations eh?

I’ll drop our first installment on the first of March.