“Football from Below” — An extract from 1966 and Not All That
In this edited extract from 1966 and Not All That, Sanaa Qureshi discusses the relationship between football and nationalism, and whether football can be used subversively to achieve social justice. 1966 and Not All That (paperback + free ebook and free shipping
Football’s Coming “Home”—David Stubbs on Euro ’96, Three Lions and 90’s football lads
This is an edited extract from David Stubb's 1996 & the End of History- available here and currently just £4.50 including UK postage in our half price World Cup sale.
1995 may have been the year that Britpop burst through, but 1996 was the year in which it loomed largest and was most overbearing, Oasis in particular, despite not releasing an album that year. 1996 was still a year of Conservative g overnment, but so commanding was Tony Blair’s lead in the polls it was clear he was Prime Minister elect. It was possible, in 1996, for him to bask in the unspoiled glow of his triumph in bringing the long Tory nightmare to an end, untarnished by the many compromised decisions he would make almost immediately on taking office in 1997, beginning by accepting a £1 million donation from Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, only months later to grant exemption to the motor racing organisation from a general ban on cigarette advertising. All of that was to come; in 1996, he was still practically an honorary Oasis band member.
1996 was also the year of Euro ’96, in which English footballing hopes were bound up with the worlds of both comedy and music. It wasn’t just Baddiel and Skinner’s collaboration with The Lightning Seeds, “Three Lions”, but the sanguine, laddish, retrograde mood engendered by Britpop and Loaded. It wasn’t just football that was coming home, but the general sense that after the dark Seventies and the fragmented Eighties, Britain (led by England, of course) had rediscovered its mojo, the spring in its step, the spirit of Hurst and McCartney, the white heat of a bygone era.
The World Cup, nationalism, and authentocracy — an extract from Games Without Frontiers
In this edited extract from Games Without Frontiers, Joe Kennedy analyses the relationship between the World Cup, politics, nationalism and authentocracy. Games Without Frontiers (paperback + free ebook and free shipping to the UK) is currently half price as part of our World Cup
WORLD CUP SALE! 50% off our football and Russian history titles
The World Cup starts today ! ! Which means that for the next four weeks, football is going to be everywhere. Or as Joe Kennedy sums it up so well in his Games Without Frontiers: Football becomes unpleasantly ubiquitous during the World
Battle of the Britons: England vs Wales
Mark Perryman previews England v Wales as competing versions of nationhood The traditional ‘Battle of Britain’ match is of course England v Scotland, the very first recognised international football match dating back to 1872 and the most intense of rivalries ever
Mordor, Helmand, Brisbane Road: Football’s New Rhetoric of Ordeal
There was a point about four or five years ago, a point I’m not bothered about confirming archivally but which nonetheless definitely occurred, at which football clubs almost uniformly, if you’ll allow the pun, changed the way that they marketed
FIFA and the search for football’s moral high ground
Mark Perryman of Philosophy Football is unconvinced by English football’s occupation of any moral high ground vs FIFA Corruption "I'm incredibly disappointed with the timing of what the BBC seem to be proposing with Panorama. To do it the week before