The protagonist of the book "The ball is round, the field is slippery" Valery Lobanovsky is offered in 1969 to head the Alma-Ata "Kairat." It's a little bit not the world you all know. There are minor changes, since two years earlier the GG of the cycle of novels "Collective Farm Construction" Tishkov P.M. In April 1969, Tishkov was a member of the Politburo and First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. Having decided to raise Kairat from the very bottom of the standings, he begins to assemble a team and help Soviet football in general - after all, the 1970 World Cup in Mexico is not far off. The book can be read separately, although it is a spin-off of the cycle of novels "Collective Farm Construction."