pallasreads's review
I thought this book would take a more narrative approach and turned out to be an essay collection. Required more background knowledge on both British society and football than I realized.
lewis_fishman's review against another edition
5.0
It shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone that football, being that it is an intersection of entertainment and sporting endeavours, represents one of the largest problematic industries in the world. Whilst manufacturing industries are worse, football is insidious, and is rife with problems that are all too commonly ignored in favour of spectacle. As the birthplace of the sport, England should strive to be different, but too often succumbs to the same instances. I'm writing this the day before England play Italy in the 2020 Euros Final, and the issues within this book (published in 2015) are all still too prevalent. Racism and classism are becoming stratified and solidified within the U.K., with the social good in the Covid-19 pandemic to feed children coming not from elected officials, but from footballers. At individual levels, many footballers are good people, however, it is the wider institution that is the problem. The F.A., UEFA and FIFA are very well and good to call out issues against referees, but fail to act on issues of substance, with reductionary and tokenistic gestures (often, there are harsher fines for flares being lit than a player being racially abused).
The English also have a problem with nationalistic ideation when it comes to the Three Lions and football. It's a reported fact that cases of domestic abuse rise when England lose. While the travelling hooliganism of the 80's and 90's may be fading away, the drunken, and all too often excusable, behaviour of fans is disgusting. We have witnessed a tournament where English fans have booed opponent's national anthems, made a young German girl cry, and then proceed to mock her further on Twitter. If England win, it should not something to be proud of, representing these sorts of fans.
The English also have a problem with nationalistic ideation when it comes to the Three Lions and football. It's a reported fact that cases of domestic abuse rise when England lose. While the travelling hooliganism of the 80's and 90's may be fading away, the drunken, and all too often excusable, behaviour of fans is disgusting. We have witnessed a tournament where English fans have booed opponent's national anthems, made a young German girl cry, and then proceed to mock her further on Twitter. If England win, it should not something to be proud of, representing these sorts of fans.
gemmak's review against another edition
3.0
If you're looking to read a book that ties the formation of the Premier League to the rise and fall of Thacherism in Britain, this is the book for you. But be warned -- this is not a sports book. It's sociology through the lens of football, only a history in the sense that it references things that happened in the past in order to make a point. It's a cogent book, but I occasionally found Goldblatt's thinking hard to pin down -- as much as he seems to appreciate the slightly less racist/sexist world of football today, I get the sense that he'd trade all that progress for the pre-Premier League fan culture.
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