Born and raised in Bootle, one of Liverpool FC’s longest-serving players, few characters embody the Scouse spirit more than Jamie Carragher. So, as the Labour Party circus departs the city after another conference season, who better to discuss the history …
I went to Gabon for football – and found a massacre
The taxi pulled up outside an unremarkable concrete block. It wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting but I paid and got out. An election banner drooped from a second-floor balcony. Maybe this was the right place.
It was January 2017, …
What’s the point of the Women’s World Cup?
A useful guide to the significance of a sporting achievement can be gleaned from how desperate politicians are to be associated with it. And given that within minutes of England’s 3-1 World Cup semi-final win over Australia on Wednesday, Lib …
Football is a game for intellectuals
The studio has the classic beige look of the late Sixties arts programme. To the left, unctuous in a pink shirt and grey double-breasted suit, sits Eric Idle, playing Brian, the presenter, his tone pitched midway between Barry Davies and …
How the Saudi Empire bought football
I was five years old, desperately precocious when it came to football, and furious that my mam hadn’t let us watch England against Czechoslovakia in the 1982 World Cup. We were on holiday, and that meant that we had to …
Gareth Southgate’s awkward revolution
Shortly after he got the England job, somebody on Twitter (and, as far as I can tell, nobody remembers who) said that Gareth Southgate resembled “an anteater gradually realising it isn’t supposed to be able to talk”. It’s a description …
The collapse of the Leicester dream
On 2 May 2016, in a bad-tempered game that became known as the Battle of the Bridge, Tottenham were held to a 2-2 draw by Chelsea. As the final whistle sounded, a city more than 100 miles away started to …
The fairy tale that freed Napoli
Naples has turned into a war zone. Fathers are lighting firecrackers for their children to explode on the cobbles. Hundreds of flares are spewing out sparks and blue smoke. Some people are crying and singing; others just gawp. I’m sure …
The football hooligans fighting for Ukraine
“Tottenham were hard. They fought well.” Vitalii Ovcharenko pauses and sips his tea, having earlier refused my offer of a beer. “I remember it clearly. There weren’t many of them and they were heavily watched by the police. But, still, …
How football outgrew the BBC
The embarrassment was clear even from the continuity announcer. “Now on BBC One, we’re sorry that we’re unable to show our normal Match of the Day,” he intoned gravely. There was no theme tune, no presenters, no commentary, no post-match …
Does Ryan Reynolds understand football?
Even by the standards of modern football, and even though he has co-owned the club for two and a half years now, there remained something deeply incongruous about seeing Ryan Reynolds applauding Wrexham off after their FA Cup fourth-round tie …
Football died after Pelé
In the popular imagination, the 1970 World Cup in Mexico still stands as the apogee of football. Broadcast in colour for the first time, it seemed the height of modernity: even the ball was named Telstar after the satellite that …
Can Wales harness football nationalism?
I watched Wales play the USA in a packed pub in Cardiff last Monday. When the anthem began, everyone stood up and belted it out as loud as they could. No one was self-conscious; no one was embarrassed. Unlike in …
In defence of Harry Kane
Poor Harry Kane, roundly mocked for almost-but-not-quite wearing his One Love rainbow armband in support of lesbian, gay and trans people during England’s first game in Qatar on Monday. Attacked on the one hand by various curmudgeons for “self-serving virtue …
The architecture of autocracy
For a building project marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster, the latest footage from the deserts of northwestern Saudi Arabia is a little underwhelming. A column of trucks is moving sand, a row of diggers poking at the barren landscape like …