The lives and times of four captains of England
by Colin Shindler
Head Of Zeus, £18.99
Reviewed by John Earls
From WSC 356 October 2016
With barely a shrug at Wayne Rooney continuing as captain despite being an increasingly controversial choice for his club side, Cambridge University academic Colin Shindler has chosen an unfortunate time to launch his high-concept social history linking the state of the nation to England’s captains of the era.
Manchester City are the new champions but, as Tony Curran explains, their unethical hoarding of players has tarnished their Premier League victory
Harry Dowd was a goalkeeper who played for Manchester City during their glory years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was a reasonable keeper but apparently an excellent plumber. Legend has it that he used to negotiate job offers with crowd members behind his goal, offering competitive rates for bathroom re-fits when play was at the other end.
Cameron Carter analyses the different reactions to football’s many controversiesJust as there must statistically be teatime programmes on the BBC that do not feature Alex Jones or John Barrowman, so we must assume that there are gay footballers out there somewhere in the universe. In Britain’s Gay Footballers (BBC3, January 30), Amal Fashanu, niece of Justin, daughter of John, quested for a gay man among the 4,000 professional players registered in the UK.
A controversial exit from Celtic has angered the Scottish club, but Graham Davidson asks if they have the right to feel aggrievedIt has never been unusual for Scottish players to move south at an early age. Denis Law and Billy Bremner never kicked a ball in club football at home, while more recently Darren Fletcher arrived in Manchester before he was a teenager. None of these moves, however, generated the publicity recently given to Islam Feruz’s decision to move from Celtic to Chelsea.
After losing Fernando Torres to Chelsea, Liverpool supporter Rob Hughes explains why player disloyalty is not a new phenomenomThe media circus that trailed Fernando Torres’s move to Chelsea once again raised what is fast becoming a dominant issue in today’s game: club loyalty. Liverpool fans’ dismay was complete when, at his first press conference at Stamford Bridge, their departed idol coolly batted away accusations of traitordom and justified his switch of allegiance by declaring that “romance in football has gone”. Yes, he said, he’d had three good seasons at Liverpool but he wanted to play for a team who actually won things. What’s more, he was never a Reds fan (though, in his defence, he was candid enough to admit he’s no Chelsea nut either). Club loyalty counted for nothing when it came to winning trophies.