Category: Uncategorized

(Yanked for further editing – liked the idea, hated the execution. )

A memorable passage from Simon Kuper’s excellent book, Ajax, The Dutch, The War: ..at six in the evening of 6 August, the day the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, the BBC Home Service reported: President Truman has announced a tremendous achievement by the Allied scientists. They have produced an atomic bomb. One has already…

So now we have to add racist chanting from fans to the stories of gambling, a dressing room dividing along racial lines, underperforming players, illegal transfers and goodness knows what else. I regret it all. Like many people, I have second and third and fourth teams, sides I have a soft spot for for a…

British football grew and thrived in northern industrial towns. The environment that fostered the game survived pretty much intact until the late 1950s. For people of my generation, the 1950s will always feel twenty years ago – albeit twenty very long, entirely revolutionary years. In truth, it’s half a century now, and the people who…

The 1939 World’s Fair in New York looked forward to the wonderful world of 1960 in a way we now find remarkable – or regrettable – or risible: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cO9X4NMb4] All of human life is there. Thrust into the future, sure. Or future 1.0 (beta), or into what the future was going to be, once, when…

I’m going to have to spend yet more time away from screens – so one more post and then back in a week or so. I can’t be the only one finding rich veins of comedy in poor Steve McClaren’s plight over Beckham. After all, had his dropping from the England squad really been entirely…

Thanks for all the kind good wishes. I’m on the mend, and hoping to catch up on my email over the next few days. What follows might be somewhat garbled. This isn’t a footie blog, and it’s not a fan blog. In fact, quite a lot of what I write here reflects a cynicism and…

UPDATE: I’ve pulled this post, as I’m sincerely very tired of whole “chippiness” thing. The link to it is as thoroughly unwelcome as the sentiment that gave rise to it in the first place.

From Brian Micklethwait’s Normblog profile: My favourite London team is Spurs, because I fixated on them in 1961 like a baby goose. But, unlike ‘real’ football supporters (who often strike me as deranged and whom I enjoy teasing) I do not hate the other clubs, and in particular I do not, like a ‘real’ Spurs…

Terry Venables adds his tuppence-worth to the debate about foreign players in the Premiership: “The academy system is something that hasn’t really borne fruit in the way we wished it did,” he said last night. “There are a lot of players coming from around the world, which makes it difficult for local boys. When I…