ON DECEMBER 7 1966, the first signs of Total Football, that short-lived but glorious chapter in the evolution of the game, were spotted in Amsterdam. That was the night that Ajax beat England’s champions, Liverpool, by 5-1 in the Olympic Stadium in the second round of the European Cup. It was the first glimpse that the […]
IN A UPTOPIAN world, football clubs would represent the towns they come from and their players would be locally-reared, devoted to their places of birth and loyal to their clubs. The world has changed: in Victorian England that may have be the case, an age where someone from a neighbouring town would be treated much […]
I RECENTLY entered a football ground for the first time since early March, but it was not to see a match, it was to take part in a tour of Tottenham Hotspur’s outstanding new stadium. This remarkable structure, which resembles a space ship landing in urban north London, is arguably the best arena I have […]
WHEN football hooliganism was at its peak, culminating in the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, the game appeared to have played into the hands of the British government. Repeated incidents during the 1970s and 1980s meant football was already considered to be a pastime for louts, an outlet for working class yobbery. The government, led […]
EARLIER in the summer, Liverpool were receiving some criticism because they had decided not to spend to reinforce their title-winning team. Jürgen Klopp made a public statement about the club not being run by an oligarch or a country and a few people got a little bent out of shape. Sceptics suggested Klopp was making […]
FOOTBALL shirts are walking advertising billboards: sponsors on the front, advertisers on the back and virtue signalling on the arms. There is no limit to how commercial the humble shirt can become, with clubs issuing three kits a season to maximise the profitability from their supporters. Once, we just wore a scarf to signify our […]
IT’S clear that kit companies and football clubs are desperate to shift more units this season, perhaps making up for a 63% drop in demand for Premier League shirts over the past year. Given the economic damage done to club balance sheets during the pandemic, the need to drive commercial revenues has meant that the […]
THE MUDDY, laced ball, resembling Barnes Wallis’ bouncing bomb, rolled into the net, careering over worm-casts and divots. A gaggle of schoolboys, wearing their Gola or Co-op boots, tried to kick the ball back in play from behind the goal. The goalkeeper, white spindly legs, Peter Bonetti –style hair and an ill-fitting, gaping-at-the-neck green jersey, […]
ENGLISH football was not quick to warm to the prospect of pan-European football and, it had no representation when the Coupe des Clubs Champions Européens kicked off in 1955, an early post-austerity attempt at sporting integration and collaboration. The author, James Walvin, in his seminal work, The People’s Game, remarked that “few areas of European […]
