Football in the 21st century seem to be totally dominated by Big Business and the media. On the back pages of national newspapers and online, football is a world of galactico players, celebrity managers, and billionaire owners. The worldwide fan bases of clubs such as Barcelona ,Real Madrid or Manchester United command such national and international attention that the rich and varied histories of football at the grassroots are sometimes all but forgotten. Yet these grassroots were and still are vitally important. They contain the collective memory of how and where the game began, of how and why football became interwoven with society and community across Britain, Europe and the world; the beating heart of local and regional loyalties, even of national identity.
So in the coming summer, why not read three new books that bypass shallow obsessions with big clubs and big names to take a ‘bottom-up’ view of football and social history?
We reviewed:
- SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT: A British Family Journey of Football, Industry, War & Migration, by Hannah Grainger Clemson (Pitch Punblishing, 2022);
- FORGOTTEN FOOTBALL CLUBS: Fifty Teams From Across the World, Gone But Never Forgotten, by Philip O’Rpurke (Pitch Publishing, 2023);
- A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF FOOTBALL, by Mickael Correia (Pluto Press, 2023).
Lest we forget
Philip O’Rourke’s Forgotten Football Clubs has a wonderfully worldwide reach, from Ireland across Western and Eastern Europe to the Americas, Australia, China and Japan before coming back to Europe and Ireland, where it began. In the process, of course, the book provides fascinating insights into the origins of organised football and, especially, how it spread far and wide. The focus is always local, sometimes quirky. There is a running theme of community and also nostalgia for something vibrant and socially valuable that somehow got lost.
I would have liked to read a longer, more ambitious introduction that might have developed common themes to link these varied local histories together through comparisons and differences but, to compensate, each chapter ends with a range of lively interviews and a range of perspectives to discuss the special circumstances of the club and how its legacy might illuminate the wider history of football.
It was good to see one women’s team included – Dick, Kerr Ladies of Preston – but perhaps there could have been one or two more, such as Femina of Paris, whose story was so closely linked with Dick, Kerr Ladies, especially by Carmen Pomies who played for and against both teams from 1920 to 1938. Overall, this lively, original book is guaranteed to tell the reader many things that are well worth knowing and that the reader never knew before.
Football as Revolution
Mickael Correia’s People’s History of Football is a book with a passionate agenda. Correia sees football as a channel for social revolution, a sport that empowers the have-nots to battle against the haves. The title of his book, and the headings of its five sections, spell out his view of football as struggle and resistance.
Part One, Defend: Working-class Resistance to the Bourgeois Order, looks at the pre-history of football before the industrial revolution; then at the clash between the rival football worlds of a privileged, educated elite in conflict with workers from deprived communities in industrial towns; then ‘munitionettes football’ as female workers in the First vWorld War saw football as an expression of freedom and equality; and finally football as class war in France during the 1920s and 1930s.
Part Two, Attack: Assault on Dictatorhips, is even more overtly about society and politics, with chapters on football against totalitarian regimes in Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s USSR and Franco’s Spain; then football’s resistance Against Nazi domination; then two chapters about football and dictatorship in Brazil and in response to the ‘Arab Spring’ revolution in Egypt in 2012.
Part Three, Dribble: Outmanouvering colonialism, has a similar theme about football as resistance – the fight for independence in Algeria; football as an expression of national identity for Palestinians; football and multiracial divisions in Brazil.
Part Four, Support: Collective Passions & Popular Cultures, shifts away from politics to social issues, especially the problem of football hooliganism. There are chapters on the ‘British Disease’ of the later 20th century; the ‘ultras’ in Italy and in Istanbul; and the unique fan culture that was shaped by Diego Maradona as a footballing god in Naples.
Part Five, Outflank: Fighting Against the Football Industry, is once again about football as a struggle by the underdog (‘real’ fans and ‘real’ communities fighting back against the billionaires corrupting ‘the people’s game’). Here, the underdogs are the student revolutionaries of 1968; women tackling sexism in France; fan-owned clubs in England; how St Pauli became the champion of left-wing politics in Germany; and how ‘Street football’ keeps alive the spirit of football against regulation and social control.
This book is very ambitious and wide-ranging. Some of its chapters are terrific, offering a vivid, idealistic view of football as an expression of social and political ideals, and as a weapon of resistance against repression or hardships. Often, however, there is a tendency to overstate. Lots of people played football with innocent enthusiasm but no social or political agenda beyond a love of the game and perhaps a burning desire to win (or at least not lose) a match against rivals from a nearby town or village in the local derby. But it’s always a rewarding book to read, full of buzzing ideas and fascinating stories.
The local social fabric of fandom
Hannah Grainger Clemson’s So Much More Than That is a quieter, more reflective book. Football is almost secondary at times in the history of a family with connections to Ireland, the West of Scotland and Cumbia before settling in the West Midlands. But football weaves its way through the narrative, in the ups and downs of supporting Aston Villa and, best of all, in the family connections with the Glenbuck Cherrypickers Afamous local club in a mining village that launched the stellar career of Bill Shankly, first as a great player for Preston North End and the Scotland national team, then as the legendary manager who took Liverpool to dizzying heights of success in the 1960s and 1970s.
One of many reasons to like this book is the range of well-chosen black-and-white photographs integrated into the text. Many of these pictures are valuable visual sources to illustrate the history of football and its place in people’s lives.
Themes a plenty
All three books have real value for anyone interested in football and history. In their different ways they raise questions about important themes: discrimination, migration, class tensions, social background, community and all kinds of struggles for equality. Read and enjoy; and perhaps, too, scroll through some of Football Makes History’s life stories to learn more about th Dick, Kerr ladies, or footballers against Nazism, or even Bill Shankly and the Glenbuck Cherrypickers. You could also listen to the Forgotten Football podcast, or find Chris Rowe’s own book on Carmen Pomies!
Photo Gallery
Let’s review
