The Archive

MC Harvey may be the only rap star who plays football to a decent standard but there are plenty of players who would love to move the other way, as Phillip Mlynar explains

Taking a hiatus from his role as one of the rappers that make up the So Solid Crew, MC Harvey – or simply “Harvey” to his new team-mates – now spends his Saturdays as left-back for AFC Wimbledon. Debuting in a 3-0 victory at Chipstead, Harvey proved to be a defender with an eye for a goal and struck up a promising understanding with Ryan Gray down the left. He also appears just as pleased with the team’s form as any of his peers who, as is usual in the Combined Counties League, don’t have a sideline in Top of the Pops appearances. “The music thing was always really just a hobby in one respect,” says Harvey who was once on Chelsea’s books. “It was fun, es­pecially when we had top-ten hits and performed at the Brits, but I’ve always loved football first. And now I’m back playing with some old mates and I’m loving it.”

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Somehow football and rap have rarely hit it off, in spite of some peciliar parallels in the fashion stakes. Al Needham works hard to find what references there are to the game

First, a word of reassurance: just because footballers seem to be getting into hip-hop a good 15 years after everyone else did does not compromise in any way the well loved cliche about footballers having bland and rubbishy musical taste. Ever since hip-hop overtook country and rock to become the most lucrative genre of music in America, it has been successfully defanged of its subversive elements, until what Chuck D of Public Enemy called “the Black CNN” is now some bloke prattling on about what he bought the other day, who he’d like to shoot and generally how ace he is. Again. For 50 Cent, Eminem and Jay-Z, read “George Benson, Shakatak and Steak and Chips”.

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Ian Plenderleith finds artists from Norway and Switzerland exploring the meaning and limits of the game (and the language), while Englishmen past and present have captured the game’s historic vistas

The history of football and art is littered with badly proportioned pencil drawings, misty-edged portraits and, on the pitch, mostly miscued overhead kicks that end up leaving their artists flat on the canvas. Once in a while, though, those overhead shots hit the target and we celebrate the beauty, just as the occasional non-playing artist captures some­thing of the game’s elusive but undeniable aesthetic side.

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The internet has its critics, but after using it to spend his money on football games to make up for his deprived childhood, Harry Pearson  certainly isn’t one of them

My childhood contact with football board games was confined to gazing wistfully at the adverts in Jimmy Hill’s Football Weekly. They promised so much delight. Wembley was based on “The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition” and boasted “the most gripping features and exciting uncertainties” recreated “with vivid and amazing fidelity”. Soc­cerama, meanwhile was thrillingly endorsed by Eng­land World Cup star Alan Ball.

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For Steve Wilson, the gleaming seats and award-winning arches of the McAlpine Stadium cannot replace the pleasures of standing behind the goal at Leeds Road under a rickety iron roof

I can hear the words before they’re formed. Someone new asks me which team I follow. “Huddersfield Town,” I reply, then wait. A slightly blank look appears on their face, mixing surprise, confusion and pity. And then it comes: “Nice stadium.”

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