gruß Mika

I really appreciate the time you took in responding. I’d have to go through the first chapter or two again to give the response your post deserves and I’ve left the thing at work. I’ll respond in more detail shortly.

Andrew,

I wasn’t arguing that McDonald’s was as culturally meaningful as football. I was arguing that local variations in football culture were quite minor – no more an indicator of local culture than local variations in McDonald’s menus. Most football writers take a sociological position on this stuff – getting really excited about all the local differences. I prefer a more (if you will) anthropological view – what’s amazing about football is how similar fandom is across all cultures.

Also, frankly, a lot of these alleged relationships are “just so” stories. My favourite in this regard is David Winner’s argument in Brilliant Orange that the Dutch are good at wing play because they live in a tiny country and are used to having to make the most of small spaces. Presumably, if they played more down the middle, you could equally say that the Dutch were really good at playing in congested spaces because they were used to being in crowds.

That’s not to say that there are no variations in the way the game is played/consumed. But I think things like economics and climate (English football is traditionally shit because you can’t play classy football in the wind, rain and mud) are much bigger factors than “culture”.

So much so that I’m compelled to stand up (just a little bit) for the “football as culture” genre of writing and thinking. While it is certainly not, as Raphael Honigstein fairly responds, a “deterministic” relationship I would argue that the relationship between football and culture is quite a bit deeper than national differences in McDonald’s menus. For one thing, millions of people do not make local versions of a Royale with Cheese part of their personal or social identity (only part of their belly and arteries). For another, the media does not produce a daily diet of narratives about the people and places eating in McD’s playland. For a third, McDonald’s is widely recognized as an emissary of American capitalism, where football has become much more contested as a “global game” (at least according to this web-site’s banner). I could probably go on, but the bottom line is that one reason there is some space on the bookshelf for “football culture” books (and not for McDonald’s culture books–in the words of Stephen Colbert “the market has spoken”) is because there is a meaningful underlying dynamic there. It’s certainly never a perfect relationship–but I suspect that is as much because there is no such thing as one static national culture (or really “culture” of any type). But football is a fun and interesting part of the mix–even in England.

So the McD’s analogy strikes me as specious; but, I must admit, it did its job and got me thinking! Thanks.

I’d like to thank you for your very thoughtful and even-handed review of my book.

The “Mexico 72″ typo – still don’t really know how that happened – was caught in time to insert a note into the review copies but sadly after the first print run had shipped. It’ll soon become the Blue Mauritius of football book covers, no doubt. Thanks for alerting me to the Rushden & Diamond mistake, I know there are others.

I do, however, have to take issue with one central tenet of your critique. You write that:

“Only about half the chapters in the book actually remain true to the book’s premise of attempting to explain English culture through football.”

This was emphatically not the book’s premise. I would never make such a claim, for the very reasons you outline in the subsequent paragraph. I don’t believe for one minute that football can explain ‘English culture” – whatever that might be – in some deterministic fashion.

My ambition was much more modest. I simply wanted to explain the unique traits of English football. It is my belief that some aspects of it can only be understood with reference to cultural, historical and religious factors that transcend the sport. If you will, I (try to) explain English football through English culture at times. But certainly not the other way round.

When I started researching the book, I felt that English football had a quite distinct ideological default position. But that was only part of the story. To me, other, more mundane but still unique factors – the press, fan culture, pop culture, globalisation – are just as important in order to understand how football is played, thought and talked about here. To describe these chapters as “filler” because they don’t conform to a “football-as-sociological-lens conceit” that I never adopted in the first place is a bit unfair in my view.

All the best and kind regards,

Raphael