An Italian friend living in Ireland, who is a long-suffering Torino supporter, once described the relationship with his football club as a “disease from which there is no cure”. It’s a pertinent analogy of the screwy relationship between fans and football; a game that usually brings more pain than joy (is it even joy, or merely a sense of release?) and it stayed in my mind when reading David Goldblatt’s latest wide-ranging work on the sport.
Injury Time is an impressive state-of-the-game-and-nations analysis, and by its end you cannot help feeling that football is in a sick, sorry condition, with society suffering an extension of this sickness, too. “Football, and the stories we tell ourselves about it, have become a running commentary on our contemporary state of emergency,” writes Goldblatt.
Following the “percussive blows” of the 2008 economic crash and ensuing austerity, Brexit, the crises of the pandemic, climate change, and the cost of living, the author convincingly contends that football, from grassroots to the elite level, captures the “polycrisis” we are living through – and how the same old ignorant prejudicial chants from the football stands now bounce into our everyday discourse.
Goldblatt scrapes below the gloss of the modern game to reveal the dark societal problems that still remain: racism, sexism, misogyny and xenophobia; physical, sexual and emotional abuse; inequality and moral bankruptcy. The sport has created new concerns, too, like the ticking time bomb of online gambling ingrained in football now, and its direct impact on the mental health of millions of young men; conspiracy theories, climate change denial, greedy consumerism; the rap sheet is long.
A Short History of Stupidity by Stuart Jeffries: Clever but with shortcomings
Deep Burn by Brendan Mac Evilly: A rural Irish thriller that doubles as an art-world satire
Poem of the Week: Redacted
Lea Ypi on Albania’s archives: ‘You might find something horrible on a person you’re extremely attached to’
Goldblatt’s book poses the ultimate question for football fans: is this game a gift or a curse? We devote so much of our collective energies to a sport that, ultimately, is indifferent to us, and in the end takes more from us that we get back (financially and spiritually). What if we put all that collective passion, commitment and time towards the betterment of society instead?
At the end of Injury Time, you feel that you will never waste your time on football ever again. And yet, even after 400 pages for the prosecution of crimes connected to the sport, Goldblatt still admits feeling “lucky to have it at all”. Still a funny ol’ game, football.
