In the wake of the Bradford and Brussels football disasters in 1985, football in England was subjected to detailed scrutiny and criticism. Critics - of all sorts and persuasions - saw in those terrible events, especially the Brussels riot, evidence of the broader problems afflicting British (not merely English) life. Football, which had once represented so much of what was once considered good - fair- play, team play and sportsmanship - was now discussed as a major national problem. To most critics, at home and abroad, football came to represent a nation in decline, characterised by organised violence, drunkenness, political extremism and a host of related social problems. It was widely assumed that football - but especially those English fans who travelled abroad - was the epitome of what had gone wrong with life in urban Britain. It is understandable that those disasters would lead to heated and emotional argument. But many of the explanations of the events culminating in the disasters appear less convincing when scrutinised more closely. This book tries to examine not only the alleged roots of those violent incidents, but also to locate the problems afflicting the national game within the context of the broad social and economic changes which have transformed British life in the past generation. The book is as much an analysis of recent British social history as it is about the game of football.

England has singularly failed to make any impact at either the World Cup or the European Championships for more than 40 years--this book explains why, with the help of exclusive interviews with players, managers, and commentators There have been 20 major international soccer tournaments since that Saturday in July 1966 when Bobby Moore lifted the World Cup trophy for England. As each of these competitions has come around, a wave of expectation in the country has been followed, with seeming inevitability, by disappointment just weeks later. But with just three semi-final appearances to show for more than 40 years of effort and pain, why does England--as a team and as a nation--continue to believe that it has an almost divine right to succeed in international soccer? Tracing the fortunes of 10 England managers--Ramsey, Revie, Greenwood, Robson, Taylor, Venables, Hoddle, Eriksson, McLaren, and Capello--this book shows just why the England team has struggled to live with the weight of expectation. Full of dramatic on-field action and dressing room gossip, it vividly recreates the highs and lows, the agony and ecstacy, the close calls and the humiliations, and pinpoints precisely why things have always gone so badly wrong.

This work studies the links between international football and politics in Britain between 1900 and 1939. It shows how the British government saw sport as an instrument of policy and cultural propaganda.

FOOTBALL (SOCCER, ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL). Written with an economist's brain and a football writer's skill, this book applies high-powered analytical tools to everyday football topics. Why England Lose isn't in the first place about money. It's about looking at data in new ways. It's about revealing counterintuitive truths about football. It explains all manner of things about the game which newspapers just can't see. It all adds up to a new way of looking at football, beyond cliches about "The Magic of the FA Cup", "England's Shock Defeat" and "Newcastle's New South American Star". No training in economics is needed to read Why England Lose. But the reader will come out of it with a better understanding not just of football, but of how economists think and what they know.

The story of British football's journey from public school diversion to mass media entertainment is a remarkable one. The Association Game traces British football from the establishment of the earliest clubs in the nineteenth century to its place as one of the prominent and commercialised leisure industries at the beginning of the twenty first century. It covers supporters and fandom, status and culture, big business, the press and electronic media and development in playing styles, tactics and rules. This is the only up to date book on the history of British football, covering the twentieth century shift from amateur to professional and whole of the British Isles, not just England.

First published in 1975, this 2nd edition has been completely rewritten to incorporate the findings of scholars and writers on the game over the past 20 years. It is a revealing account of football, and of broader social changes in the 20th century.