Jonathan Wilson is one of the most widely respected sports writers of his generation.
Since editing the sports section of the student paper at Oxford University, he has covered the subject in many major outlets, including The Independent, The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Financial Times, and FourFourTwo. His work has won him international acclaim; he is a 4-time winner of the FSA Football Writer Of The Year award, and his 2008 book - Inverting The Pyramid - collected several gongs for its incisive assessment of how soccer tactics have changed over time.
Today, he hosts the popular football history podcast, It Was What It Was, and continues to write for The Guardian, UnHerd, and World Soccer. His most recent book - The Power And The Glory: A New History Of The World Cup - was released this year.
Why did we invite him on?
Football might be the single most popular ‘thing’ on Earth. As a species, we watch it in our billions. No band, artist, writer, book, film, or religious movement has come close to enjoying the same cultural ubiquity as ‘the beautiful game’. It isn’t even close.
This is no secret. Less clear, however, is why that’s the case. How did a mere game become the most widely celebrated aspect of human society?
It’s a question we’ve been toying with for some time. When it came time to answer it, Jonathan was the natural candidate.
What did we learn?
”Football’s very simple. You don’t even need a rock or a real pitch. Anyone can watch it and understand; the tactics are very complicated and fascinating, but everyone can grasp the basic tenets. As for how it spread… well, that’s the story of empire.”
Ball games are as old as competition itself. Anthropologists have found evidence that ancestral versions of football have existed for thousands of years, and it’s no surprise. It’s cheap, simple, and can be played with almost anything. However, it isn’t until the 1800s that it began to establish its global dominance.
”Football is taken around the world by English teachers, the church, English businessmen, engineers… Wherever you have an English community, you have football. The local communities see this and think, ‘Well, we can do that.’”
Even then, it’s only the beginning. For years, football remains a pass-time of the elites alone; public school boys played gentlemanly games to while away the hours while the workers slaved away in the fields. If things didn’t change, it would be as popular today as polo and lacrosse.
”It comes from public schools, but it really takes off because of working class adoption of it … From the 1880s, working class clubs start playing in the FA Cup, and they start winning.”
The game is becoming more universal, but still its appeal is limited. Football doesn’t become a constant of working-class culture until the Factory Acts of the late 19th century.
”Suddenly, you have Saturday afternoon and Sundays off. What do you do on a Saturday afternoon? You collect your pay packet, have a couple of pints and go watch the football. That’s when people realise they can make money from it. But not only that, it’s a way for factory owners to make their workers happy; if they fund the club their workers are going to see play, and that club is winning things, it enhances their status too … By the 1890s, you have crowds of the tens of thousands.”
From here, there was no stopping it. Over the next century, football would ascend from a niche interest to the central pillar of global culture. A quasireligious experience. And like religion, violence soon followed.
Konstantin recalls, soon after moving to Britain from the Soviet Union, seeing the England squad knocked out of Euro ‘96 by Germany. The reaction was ferocious; anything German-associated was an acceptable target of violence and destruction. At the time, he was rattled. Today, he recognises it as far more typical than he initially believed.
How did that happen?
”Football violence was there from the start … But hooliganism as we know it begins in the ‘60s. The moral panic starts in November 1964 after a game between Everton and Leeds, when an Everton defender is sent off in the 4th minute in the game. By the 10th minute, the referee has had to take both teams off to calm everyone down … The following week, the newspapers are talking about the violent culture on and off the pitch. But it’s calmed down now - the ‘80s was really the peak of this.”
Why?
”The people going to games are much older. CCTV, policing… they play their part. But tickets are really expensive, so people who go are old, and the wild teenagers are no longer there.”
Is that all it is? If that’s true, why is it unique to football? And why is it present in every country where football is popular?
Is there something about football that invites violence?
”Yes, but the answer’s complicated, and I’m hesitant about saying it.”
