football | Pandaemonium

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

RESPECT AND TOLERANCE, PEOPLE AND IDEAS

December 15, 2020 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the changing meanings of respect and tolerance, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the revelations at the Grenfell inquiry.) It was published on 13 December 2020, under the headline “Ideas can be tolerated without being respected. The distinction is key”. Should Cambridge University academics and students “tolerate” or “respect” the views of others with which they might disagree? Should we tolerate Millwall fans booing players taking the knee? Should gender-critical feminists who argue for […]

Categories: Free Speech, Philosophy & Ethics, Women • Tags: cambridge university, censorship, football, free speech, les ferdinand, millwall, racism, respect, salil tripathi, taking the knee, tolerance, transgender, twitter

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

THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE LEAST IMPORTANT THINGS

April 21, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the meaning of sport at a time when there isn’t any, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 19 April 2020, under the headline ‘It’s not just the spectacle we crave. Sport also offers identity, pride, hope’. I tried. I really did. But I simply could not get into it. Belarusian football, that is. As coronavirus has brought life to a standstill across the globe, so sport has disappeared from our calendar. And many sports, […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: belarus, bill shankly, coronavirus, david papineau, fever pitch, football, hillsborough disaster, jurgen klopp, liverpool fc, lockdown, nick fornby, noam chomsky

VAR, TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN JUDGMENT

November 18, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on what VAR tells us about our relationship to technology, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 17 November 2019, under the headline ‘Technology will never replace human judgment. Look at football…’ Even if you can’t tell your offside from your elbow (in the face), you’ve probably heard of VAR. The video assistant referee has been introduced into top-level football to cut out errors by referees. At every Premier League game, a VAR referee watches TV feeds of […]

Categories: Human, Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology, Sport • Tags: ai, football, human judgment, technology, var

FIFA AND THE CORRUPTION OF RHETORIC

June 17, 2015 by Kenan Malik

My latest article for the New York Times is about the overblown rhetoric on both sides of the debate about the Fifa scandal. It was published under the headline ‘The Corrupt Rhetoric of the FIFA Scandal’: ‘We have fought colonialism and defeated it and we still fight imperialism and we will fight it whenever it manifests itself.” So claimed South Africa’s sports minister, Fikile Mbalula, recently. He was talking not of war or invasion but about the F.B.I.’s investigation into […]

Categories: International, Politics, Sport • Tags: fifa, football, usa

WORLD CUP, MYTH AND SENTIMENT

July 14, 2014 by Kenan Malik

So, another World Cup, another German victory, another England humiliation. And at the end of it all some (not quite) random thoughts about the tournament. . 1 A fine World Cup, some truly great games, but no truly great team – not even Germany, outstanding though they were, and worthy winners though they are. . 2 Part of what made this tournament so riveting was the way it upset so many received wisdoms and footballing myths. Most of the ‘big’ […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: brazil, england, football, germany, sport, world cup

WHO IS ENGLISH ENOUGH TO PLAY FOR ENGLAND?

February 21, 2014 by Kenan Malik

David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy of Science at King’s College, London. He has also a wonderful new blog about sport, More Important Than That. I am delighted to publish on Pandaemonium his latest essay, on the absurdities of sporting eligibility rules. My thanks to David for contributing here, and do check out his blog. David Papineau Civil society and why Adnan Januzaj should be eligible for England (though he isn’t) Adnan Januzaj is what American sports journalists call a ‘phenom’. […]

Categories: Britain, Sport • Tags: britishness, david papineau, englishness, football, national identity, nationalism, sport

REACHING FOR A MORAL HIGH GROUND LONG SINCE CROWDED

November 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Today’s Premiership clash between Chelsea and Liverpool provides a good opportunity for me to write about something about which I have been thinking for a long time – the controversy over racism in English football. Chelsea and Liverpool are the two clubs at the heart of that controversy. Earlier this year, Luis Suarez, Liverpool’s Uruguayan forward, was banned for eight matches for calling Manchester United’s Patrice Evra a ‘negrito’. Suarez insisted that this was colloquial Spanish for ‘mate’. An FA disciplinary […]

Categories: Free Speech, Race & Immigration, Sport • Tags: anti-racism, football, hate speech, racism