Ryan Baldi is a sportswriter and author with years of experience covering major live events, interviewing key figures and producing popular and insightful features. His work is featured by BBC Sport, The Guardian, World Soccer magazine, FourFourTwo, The Independent, the i newspaper and more. His first book, The Next Big Thing: How Football’s Wonderkids Lose Their Way, was published in 2019; he was long-listed for the William Hill Award and short-listed for Football Book of the Year for The Dream Factory: Inside the Make-or-Break World of Football’s Academies.