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 …
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 …
How lobbyists captured the EU
Addressing a recent European Parliament debate on “human rights in the context of the World Cup”, vice-president Eva Kaili had an unexpected message: “Qatar is a frontrunner in labour rights.” So, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when, last week, …
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 …
Why we need World Cup nationalism
The tyranny of globalisation finally seems to be waning, but the liberal Left aren’t too happy about it. Writing in The Guardian this week, Gordon Brown complained that “nationalism has replaced neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of the age”. For …
The World Cup has never been beautiful
James Maddison in. Ben White and Marcus Rashford restored. Kalvin Phillips and Kyle Walker risked despite injury. As the England squad was announced yesterday, the familiar excitement began to kindle. Even if the reported viewing figure for the 2018 final …
Our Queen’s sacrifice
It seems that it should be a near spiritual ritual of Britishness to live through the end of the reign of one sovereign and the beginning of another. The emotions around the death of a monarch are, for those who …