Category Archives: Sport

IN FOOTBALL AS IN POLITICS, THE ELITE PLAY VICTIM

June 12, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Manchester City “declaring war on the football elite”, was published in the Observer on 9 June 2024 under the headline “Playing the victim card is how elites game the system. Just look at Manchester City”. If you want a metaphor for the state of contemporary politics, you could do worse than keep an eye on the football. Not Euro 24, the tournament that begins at the end of the week, though it should be gripping, but rather […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: abu dhabi, english premier league, financial fair play, football, manchester city, psr, qatar, roman abramovich, saudi arabia, sheikh mansour, uefa, working class

A EULOGY TO A FOOTBALL ROMANTIC

May 22, 2024 by Kenan Malik

This essay, a tribute Jürgen Klopp, was published in the Observer on 19 May 2024 under the headline “Jürgen Klopp brought not only victories but a fan’s passion for the game”. “It’s not so important what people think when you come in”, Jürgen Klopp observed on being unveiled as Liverpool manager in October 2015. “It’s much more important what people think when you leave.” Today is the day Klopp leaves. It is the final day of the Premier League season in England, and Manchester City will probably […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: english premier league, esl, european super league, football, football romanticism, jurgen klopp, liverpool fc, manchester city, pep guardiola, premier league, romanticism, sheikh mansour

HOBSON’S CHOICE IN FOOTBALL’S WARS

December 27, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the war to profit from football, was published in the Observer on 24 December 2023 under the headline “A culture of greed, riddled with inequality. Global football is a mirror of our age”. Nadine Dorries or Jacob Rees-Mogg? Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk? Uefa or the European Super League? Yes, sometimes life seems like a succession of Hobson’s choices. Last week the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Uefa, which oversees European football, and the game’s […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: corruption, david conn, david goldblatt, ecj, esl, fifa, football, horst dassler, joao havelenage, michel platini, qatar world cup, saudi arabia, sepp blatter, uefa

THE SAUDIS PLAYING A GAME LONG ESTABLISHED

July 26, 2023 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Saudi sportswashing, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 23 July 2023, under the headline “Saudis don’t need the money that flows in modern sport, but they do crave the kudos”. Jordan Henderson has been captain of Liverpool FC for eight years. He is a senior member of the England squad. He has been one of the most a vocal champion of LGBT rights within football. “I do believe when you see something that is clearly […]

Categories: International, Sport • Tags: football, gay rights, hypocrisy, jamal khashoggi, jordan henderson, lgbt rights, mbs, premier league, saudi arabia, sportswashing

UNIVERSALISM, RELATIVISM AND QATAR

December 1, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on universalism, relativism and the debate about human rights in Qatar, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 27 November 2022, under the headline “It can be hard to distinguish the cultural claims of right and left. Just look at Qatar”. “Everyone has their beliefs and cultures. We welcome and respect that. All we ask is that other people do the same for us.” So insists Yasir al-Jamal, deputy general secretary of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery and […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Sport • Tags: cultural imperialism, cultural relativism, enlightenment, fifa, herder, imperialism, qatar, qatar world cup, racism, universalism

SEX, GENDER AND SPORT

April 6, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about transgender athletes in sport, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 April 2022, under the headline “From pool to track: disputes over trans athletes mustn’t make everyone a loser”. If you want a case study of how not to handle the question of transgender athletes in sport, look to the treatment of British cyclist Emily Bridges. As a talented male junior, Bridges won three silver medals at national championships and seemed destined […]

Categories: Sport, Women • Tags: emily bridges, gender, joanna harper, lia thomas, sex-based categories, testosterone, trans rights, transgender, transgender athletes, transphobia, women's rights

CRICKET AND THE CRAVING FOR A QUICK FIX

December 30, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debacle of English Test cricket, was my Observer column this week. It was published 26 December 2021, under the headline “The thrills! The spills! No wonder we’re losing the drama of the epic encounter”. (Oh, and if you don’t already know, England were humiliated in Melbourne.) Perhaps I won’t have woken up this morning to the sound of clattering England wickets in the Boxing Day heat of Melbourne. Perhaps, by the time you read this, England will have […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: australia, ben stokes, cricket, england, formula one, indian premier league, lewis hamilton, max verstappen, miracle of istanbul, muhammad ali, rumble in the jungle, t20, test cricket, the ashes

FORMS OF BIGOTRY AND FORMS OF BLINDNESS

November 23, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the lessons of the Azeem Rafiq case, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 14 November 2021, under the headline “If tackling racism is just a box-ticking exercise, the urgent imperative to change our ways is lost”. For some, it was a gotcha moment. For others, an occasion to parade their own prejudices. Yet others celebrated the end of the “attempt to destroy English cricket”. On Tuesday, Azeem Rafiq gave devastating testimony to a parliamentary committee about the racism he had […]

Categories: Britain, Race & Immigration, Sport • Tags: antisemtism, azeem rafiq, cricket, identity politics, jews, muslims, racism, rare earth mettle, royal court theatre, yorkshire cricket club

FROM THE ESL TO NOT MUCH BETTER

August 17, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the trouble with football, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 15 August 2021, under the headline “It was only yesterday we saved football’s soul. We might be losing it again…” It was like the football version of the race between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to be the first dick in space. The race, that is, to pull off the most stratospheric transfer deal. On Thursday, Chelsea announced the signing of Belgian forward Romelu Lukaku for an […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: abu dhabi, barcelona, chelsea, esl, football, football finance, harry kane, jack grealish, jürgen klopp, lionel messi, manchester city, psg, qatar, roman abramovich, romelu lukaku, sheikh mansour

ON BEING A 90-MINUTE ENGLISHMAN

July 7, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on football and Englishness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 4 July 2021, under the headline “I love the football team but can’t get tribal about England. What’s going on?” Yes, I shouted with joy when Raheem Sterling scored against Germany last week. I would have been equally joyful had he scored against Scotland. And when India play England in a Test series next month, I will be rooting for England, not for the country of my birth. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Sport • Tags: britishness, england, englishness, eric hobsbawm, football, identity, john denham, nationalism, racism, roger scruton, sport, sunder katwala, tebbit test

SPORT, POLITICS AND TAKING THE KNEE

June 16, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the debate over taking the knee, and the relationship between sport and politics, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 13 June 2021, under the headline “We need to separate sport and politics. But also recognise that they’re inseparable”. “Fans don’t want politics brought into football.” Many would agree with Tory MP Lee Anderson’s sentiment. And so, he carried on, in response to England footballers “taking the knee” before a match: “For the first time in […]

Categories: Politics, Sport • Tags: black lives matter, colin kaepernick, culture wars, englishness, football, lee anderson, muhammad ali, patriotism, racism, taking the knee, wilfried zaha

THE BIGOTRY OF RACE NORMING

June 6, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This is a (very) short piece on the practice of “race norming” that was published as part of my Observer column, 6 June 2021. It is an important issue, and I will hopefully write a longer article on this issue soon. The NFL, American football’s professional league, is to abandon the practice of “race norming” in assessing compensation for former players with brain injuries. It’s the assumption that black players have lower cognitive functioning than white ones, an assumption that made […]

Categories: Race & Immigration, Sport • Tags: affirmative action, american football, race norming, racism, usa

MARADONA, MUHAMMAD ALI AND ME

November 29, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This (very) short piece on Maradona was published aspart of my column in the Observer, 29 November 2020 I can still remember where I was when, in 1986, Diego Maradona scored with the “hand of God”. In a flat on the Coventry Cross estate, in east London. An Asian family lived there, one of a handful on the estate, who had faced vicious racist attacks. An England-Argentina game, just four years after the Falklands conflict, was a threatening proposition. I […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: argentina, football, hand of god, maradona, muhammad ali, racism

WHAT FOOTBALL TELLS US ABOUT GLOBALISATION

October 27, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on football and globlisation, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Facebook and transparency.) It was published on 25 October 2020, under the headline “Money fosters the cosmopolitan joy of our football but also its soullessness”. If you want to see the dilemmas of globalisation playing out, forget Brexit or the US elections. Watch a game of football (though in Britain, of course, you can’t actually watch a game in a stadium these […]

Categories: Politics, Sport • Tags: english premier league, european premier league, football, globalisation, heysel tragedy, identity, inequality, jurgen klopp, liverpool fc, mohamed salah, pep guardiola

EVERTON WEEKES AND THE PASSING OF AN ERA

July 4, 2020 by Kenan Malik

To the outsider, cricket is a bafflingly genteel game. But those who know the game, know also that few sports so seethe with political tension. In the nineteenth century, MCC Secretary Lord Harris called cricket ‘the building block of Empire’. As governor of Bombay in the 1890s, Harris introduced cricket to India to teach ‘moral lessons to the masses’. In the twentieth century it became a vehicle for forging anti-imperialist consciousness and a sense of national pride. And nowhere more […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: beyond a boundary, clr james, cricket, everton weeeks, three ws, west indian cricket