I’ve spoken here of football being an emergent phenomenon of industrial urban society, of the kind of world that’s largely disappeared in the United Kingdom in recent decades.
I’m going to be unable to update here with anything substantial until the weekend, so I’m going to leave you with a link to a photograph by the excellent Geoff Plumb (whose site I warmly recommend: explore whilst you’re there) that really, for me, sums up that lost environment.
I live about 500 yards from where that photo was taken. The only real difference now is that the buildings all have smashed windows.