Posted in Sport

Mark Perryman reviews the best of this summer’s sports books

boykoff comps.inddEnglish football’s Premiership, the best league in the world? The same four clubs, well give or take one perhaps, could be jotted down on a scrap of paper every August with a cast-iron guarantee they will fill the Champions League places, year in, year out. Tedium: it’s the brand value the Premiership has become past masters at providing, yet barely a word of dissent ever breaks through the breathless excitement football’s boosterists provide across the print, TV and radio media.

Meantime despite the sportification of society levels of participation in scarcely any form of physical activity continue to rocket downwards. Football, the richest and most high profile of all sports has amongst the sharpest rates of decline in numbers taking part, unless of course we count watching it from the comfort of our own sofa Continue reading →

Liberté, Égalité, Vélocité

Mark Perryman makes the case for a two-wheeled  revolution

Le Tour is now as much a fixture of the Great British Sporting Summer as Wimbledon strawberries and cream, a flutter on the Derby, England’s bi-annual early exit from a Euro or a World Cup and the five-day drama of an Ashes Test, weather permitting.

It wasn’t always thus. Not so long ago cycling up mountains was only something those pesky continentals were daft enough to attempt, domestic interest was less than zero.  Olympic success dating back to Chris Boardman’s track gold at Barcelona ‘92 began to change this but it took another decade and and a bit with the Gold Rush that began at Athens ‘2004  to accelerate the interest. Beijing 2008 and London 2012 firmly established track cycling as amongst Team GB’s number one Olympian sports aided by the mega-personalities of Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott and Paralympian Sarah Storey too. Continue reading →

When it comes to FIFA the FA’s not got a leg to stand on

FICK FUFAMark Perryman of Philosophy Football is unconvinced by English football’s occupation of any moral high ground vs FiFA Corruption

I’m incredibly disappointed with the timing of what the BBC seem to be proposing with Panorama. To do it the week before the vote – I don’t think think it’s patriotic.”

So said Andy Anson, Director of the England World Cup 2018 bid, in November 2010. That’s right, on the eve of England’s doomed bid to host World Cup 2018 the bid director took time out to lambast the BBC for investigating FIFA corruption. Five years later with FIFA headquarters raided by police and arrests made the smell of the hypocrisy of English football adopting the role of the game’s moral guardian should border on the overpowering. But almost all of this context is lost in the soft target discourse of Blatter-bashing. Continue reading →

Autumn books: beyond the froth

Played_in_London coverMark Perryman of Philosophy Football picks out the best of the autumn sports books

I’m sorry but you won’t find here the just-in-time-for Christmas sports autobiography blockbusters. With just enough manufactured controversy to ensure blanket coverage when they are launched. Even a skim read will reveal that on the contrary they tell the reader very little they didn’t either know or suspect already.

Instead I would recommend a weighty volume of this sort A Companion to Sport edited by David Andrews and Ben Carrington. The range of coverage from Monty Panesar to football’s 2010 World Cup is matched by the variety of insights, sport as a contested space being the overarching theme. As an academic book scandalously expensive, but any well-stocked library. should have a copy. Continue reading →

Stop foul play in Qatar

Playfair QatarThe TUC has launched the campaign – Playfair Qatar – to draw football fans into the protests against Qatar’s treatment of the workforce building the infrastructure for its 2022 World Cup. The campaign will complement other campaigns already running by bringing in new allies.

Fans – many of whom are also trade unionists – are as outraged as anyone that Qatar’s lax health and safety and repressive “kafala” laws are likely to lead to 4,000 deaths before the 2022 World Cup begins. Football fans are considered such an important constituency in the battle of the hosting of the World Cup that Qatar has paid a PR agency to set up a “grass roots” blog which also serves as a platform for character assassinations of anyone criticising the country. Continue reading →