It’s a (thinking) man’s game
Pele called it “the beautiful game”, and Brazil is the team of choice for the new football fan with a liberal bent, as represented here by Philosophy Football.
Philosophy Football’s t-shirts quote the likes of Bill Shankly and Bert Camus (but not Ron Atkinson and Ron Noades). Philosphy Football runs its own team, based, not entirely surprisingly, in the spiritual home of new football: Islington.
The art of “beautiful game”
Football has attracted interest from a variety of unlikely quarters, from theatre to poetry and jazz. 2008 witnessed a new apogee (or nadir, depending on your point of view) with the English National Ballet’s production: The Beautiful Game – A Football Ballet.
Three Lions
Euro 96 completed the rehabilitation of the England team. The flag of St George was ubiquitous, replacing the tattered union flags that had accompanied earlier English expeditionary forces. With accompaniment strangely reminiscent of that other national treasure, Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody”, the land soon echoed to the familiar refrain: “Football’s coming home”…
It was downhill from here on. By the 1998 World Cup, we were subjected to the appalling spectacle of Fat Les…
Little did we know that this would one day seem like a golden age of football songs, when placed alongside the likes of the Arsenal Away Boyz. Ladies and Gentlemen, set down your latte and ciabatta and put your hands together for “Arsenals [sic] number one Gooner crazy band”…
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