The Age of Football by David Goldblatt (Pan Macmillan, £25)
Football dominates the world but, as David Goldblatt shows in his latest epic study, there is a dark side to its ubiquity. His theme is power. In searing detail and with laconic wit, he reveals the ways ruthless deployment of economic and political power blight the game and wider society. The bigger football gets, it seems, the darker many of the forces swirling through it have become.
In England, the death of Bury FC and the grimly one-sided Cup Final between Watford and the reputation-laundering operation known as Manchester City highlighted the inequality between the rich and the rest.
Elsewhere, things are worse. Moving from continent to continent, the phenomenally well-travelled Goldblatt brings us stories of exploited fans and players, horrendously run clubs, violence, bigotry of all sorts, and an unending cast of corrupt or inept officials and politicians.
In Asia, rich men like “chairman of Thailand’s duty free monopolists” Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, Leicester City’s late owner, have bought themselves “reasonably priced global visibility” through the acquisition of European teams.
Thanks to TV, the game has become potent almost everywhere. Globalization moves fast and has unexpected consequences. In Africa, satellite coverage has created passion for English football but decimated the local game.
In Argentina, some of the violent and powerful fan groups known as barras bravas are so involved with illegal drugs they should be regarded as crime organisations.
A terrific chapter on Sepp Blatter’s corrupted FIFA depicts the organisation as subtly poisoning an entire society, much as drugs and criminality permeate Baltimore in The Wire.
“The fragility of the rule of law corrupts multiple spheres of life,” Goldblatt writes. “The lines between criminal gangs and a multitude of other social actors and networks have been blurred”.
Sometimes, darkness and light are inextricably linked. Colombian football, Goldblatt notes, rose and fell on a tide of cocaine-trade money. Later, the game played a part in ending the FARC war. Another tour de force chapter likens last year’s World Cup in Putin’s Russia to a Potemkin Village.
On the plus side, there are heroes and examples of the game improving lives. The popular protests in Brazil around the Confederation Cup 2017, or the Egyptian fans who played a central role in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak show how football can become a vehicle for better forces.
In Uganda, football is at the heart of a uniquely humane regime in a Kampala prison. We meet poetic Arab commentators, grassroots activists, artists, and the late Ernest Okonkwo, voice of Nigeria’s lost golden age of football.
But more often the picture is bleak. Football, Goldblatt tells us, has been comprehensively “colonised, shaped and used” by the powerful.
David Winner’s books include ‘Those Feet: An Intimate History of English Football’, and ‘Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football’.
