Book description
On August 15th 1992, the Premier League kicked off for the very
first time to the sound of money. That same season, a new kind of
branded commercialism descended across the continent as the European
Cup was re-launched as the Champions League. In 1994, the game's
oldest trophy, the FA Cup, would become the last of English football's
major competitions to fall to commercial sponsors. The early 1990s
mark the moment at which the beautiful game, the sport of the common
man, wound up on a market stall, complete with price tag. Of course
the game needed to change - terraces had become ugly, dangerous
places, blighted with racism and afflicted with the tragedies of
Hillsborough and Heysel; on the mud-patches that passed for pitches,
tackles were brutal, bone-crunching, and very much from behind. But
rather than righting wrongs, pockets were lined as the legacy of
football was cashed in. Rob Smyth and Georgina Turner explore the
fan's-eye view of 21st-century football, a game that can be about
breathtaking style, but very little substance; a grossly inflated
memory of its former self where Football's Soul (TM) is an idea to be
traded, not treasured. These days, at least as much energy is spent
figuring out how to exploit money-spinning opportunities as holes in
the opposition back four, with long-suffering supporters brazenly
commodified along the way. Yet in the game of the people, for the
people, 'Jumpers for Goalposts' proves that the fans do know best and
that to recover its soul, the beautiful game has to rediscover its roots.
Rob Smyth is an experienced sports journalist who writes for the
'Guardian', 'Wisden Cricketer', 'The Economist' and many other
newspapers and magazines. His first book, 'The Spirit of Cricket'
(9781904027843), was published by E&T in 2010; this is his second.
Georgina Turner is an experienced football journalist who writes
for Sports Illustrated, The Observer, The Guardian and When Saturday
Comes, among others. She teaches media and communication studies and
has absolutely no left foot.
