Longtime TOA readers may be familiar with The Football Ramble for its regular appearances atop my annual podcast rankings. I do not recommend this 2016 book with the same conviction I reserve for the podcast - the book, which I read twice in just under a year, doesn't capture the enthusiasm, spontaneity, and chemistry that make the podcast one of my all-time favorites. This read was also a bit too broad for me given how much I already know about soccer- eh hem, football. However, for a new or casual fan who is interested in learning more about the quirks and joys of the game, The Football Ramble will prove a perfect bit of reading.
The Football Ramble by Marcus Speller, Luke Moore, Pete Donaldson, Jim Campbell (February 2020, January 2021)
My personal theory for soccer's overwhelming global popularity is that people of average height and varying physical skills are not automatically unlikely to become star players, which means it will always enjoy a disproportionately larger talent pool than sports with narrower athletic requirements, particularly the major American sports that discriminate for power (helmet football) or height (basketball). It also helps that soccer is a sport which requires almost no equipment - a ball and markers for goals - before it can be played by anyone, anywhere, at anytime, which again helps expand its talent pool at the expense of the sports that require greater investment in tools (golf, ice hockey) or space (baseball, tennis, cricket). These two general factors create a self-perpetuating cycle because new stars, particularly from previously unknown markets, are more likely to be soccer players due to the sport's relative lack of barriers, and these players in turn fuel the popularity of the sport at home which leads to more participation, and so on.
This leads me to a concerning theme from this book which emerged from my two sets of book notes (first and second) - it seems that the current state of the world's game is one where the status quo leans in favor of exclusivity, particularly as it relates to the familiar opposition of sexism, xenophobia, or ableism, and it's a credit to these podcasters that there are so many insights throughout which make note of these concerns. The lack of women in the game is obvious to even the most casual observer, particularly in the non-representation at managerial level, and Sir Alex Ferguson's famous dismissal of Arsene Wenger as an expert on "Japanese football" is belied by the finding that foreign managers in the Premier League have won around 30% more games than their British counterparts (at the time of the book's publication). In addition to these thoughts, The Football Ramble also discusses the issue of stadium accessibility, which given the amount of revenue generated by the sport should at minimum have been resolved at the elite levels. These topics are problematic in their own right, but it's also important to remember that open access is the foundation of the sport's success and that anything which creates new barriers in the game is a long-term threat to the future of soccer.
TOA Rating: Three's company out of four's a ramble.
