“Another World (Cup) Is Possible!”: Twenty Theses About Modern Football

Abstract

The motivation for this analysis is twofold. First, it is my contention that the governance of the top tier of elite men’s professional football is today in an unprecedented state of disrepair, moral bankruptcy and public disrepute such that hitherto unimaginable transformations have become possible. Second, this chapter is interested in addressing what I take to be a significant lack in the growing body of critical writing about football. In his “Introduction” to Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty explains that the genesis of his sweeping analysis of inequality is a belief that historical debates among economists were a “dialogue of the deaf” ¹ by virtue of the fact that “research on the distribution of wealth was for a long time based on a relatively limited set of firmly established facts together with a wide variety of purely theoretical speculations.” ² He explains how his discipline has been historically blighted by an excess of deeply held theoretical views, all of which were based on very little or no hard evidence or concrete analysis grounded in data. More so than his conclusions or diagnoses, Piketty’s primary contribution to our thinking around inequality has been the creation of, and engagement with, massive data sets within which he looks for larger patterns and the theories to account for them.

Earlier versions of parts of this essay were presented on the “Philosophy of Football” panel at the Soccer as the Beautiful Game Conference (“What Is Football For? A Modest Proposal,” Hofstra University, Long Island, NY, April 10, 2014) and as a keynote address at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Football and Communities of Resistance Conference [“‘Another World (Cup) is Possible!’: Brazil 2014 and the Birth of Occupy Football,” Manchester, UK. June 12, 2014]. I would like to acknowledge the many positive contributions of the participants at these events for their valuable feedback, which has changed the shape of this work.