ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
Soccer vs the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics by Gabriel Kuhn
A timely and entertaining read on the history and development of the ‘beautiful game’
Trailblazers: Dick, Kerrs Ladies, 1921
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
THERE is a widely accepted idea that football emerged from working-class culture, went through a golden age as the people’s game and then sold its soul to Sky, Adidas and Coca Cola.
But Soccer vs the State, Gabriel Kuhn's lively and painstaking examination of the sport’s hidden history and competing cultures, reveals a more complex narrative.
The book is full of surprises. In the early 19th century football was played by future captains of industry and administrators of empire, though this changed in the 1880s when professionalisation attracted young men seeking an escape from factory work. With professional players came working-class crowds keen to watch their mates.
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