Football and Identity Politics

In this month’s free episode, Juliet and Tom talk to David Wearing, author of AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain and assistant professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, about the vexed issue of identity politics as it relates to football, including the Gulf states’ involvement with the sport. We talked about the absurdity and hypocrisy of the demand to ‘Keep Politics Out of Football’, how football is structured upon ‘identity politics’ of region and nation, the importance of symbolism, some histories of racism, homophobia and sexism in football and the successes and failures of attempts to combat them. In News, we talked about Manchester United’s ludicrously on-the-nose dystopian circus tent and how Profit and Sustainability Rules might usher in another wave of new super-stadia, and congratulated Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund on accruing their first trophy. In our football weekends, David lamented Charlton Athletic’s ongoing misfortunes, Juliet went to Rapid Vienna and saw a fox delay the kick-off at Tranmere Rovers, while Tom saw his son score five goals across two Under-8 and Under-9 matches rather than watching Southampton. Read Tom in this month’s edition of When Saturday Comes: https://www.wsc.co.uk/shop/wsc-452/ Subscribe to us on Patreon for £3.50 to get an extra episode every month: https://www.patreon.com/c/ProRevolutionSoccer