On the northern bank of the Meuse, a schoolboy carries, in a builder’s wheelbarrow, some of the materials he needs in order to build a piece of his life: some nets, a few pairs of boots, two leather balls, and a bundle of deep-red shirts. In front of him stands the multitude of chimneys, the signature of the Industrial Revolution, …

Before the era of football’s commodified “gentrification” at the end of the twentieth century, the intellectual world almost refused to speak about the sport. In many cases, it even regarded football as its enemy, as a social phenomenon existing only to lull the very consciences it supposedly sought to awaken. Yet this intellectual class never did, and never will, encompass …

The economics of football do not only concern its commercialisation; it is the way one perceives and analyses it as a phenomenon, setting aside the – seemingly romantic – empirical approach and instead breaking down into quantities and mechanisms all its constituent elements. It is essentially the perception of football in a technocratic way, one that goes beyond the framework …

Picture a scene: a crowd of people, of various ages, visibly drawn from different classes, composed of different genders, nationalities, and perhaps with differing levels of academic education. They sit in an amphitheatrical structure, facing us. On their faces we see the moment of suspense — for this instant of looking, and perhaps for the one that will follow — …

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 November 1953, 150,000 spectators left Wembley having just witnessed one of the most influential matches in the evolution of world football. As is often the case in such moments, few may have grasped the historical significance of what unfolded before their eyes. Yet even fewer today, more than half a century later, place this …

The northern hemisphere is deep in summer. Football has been on hold for months. The leagues and European competitions of the past season feel like part of an increasingly distant past. The weekend routine, those rainy afternoons in every corner of northern and central Europe, also feels far away. Those who can afford it find themselves in a completely different …

There is a reason why football is not merely a popular sport, but something far broader than that definition suggests. The analysis of tactics and their evolution, the revisiting of great matches, the biographies of legendary footballers and managers — these fill the pages of books, the minutes of radio and television programmes, and inspire films and other works of …

The countdown is on for the 21st edition of the FIFA Club World Cup, which will take place in an entirely new format in the United States. Regardless of the current climate in the host nation—at the centre of enormous and potentially historic social developments—the new shape of the competition raises major questions about its contribution to the evolution of …

The hours of Sunday pass by, the sun has already crossed its zenith and is now on its way to the oceans, leaving the Mediterranean behind. It’s the hour when the voices begin, when people start to gather. The road leads through the old bed of the Túria and winds its way from Carrer de Misser Mascó—with all the cafés …

In every field of human activity and inquiry, there are certain special reference points — human creations that stand out as exceptional within their broader context. In football literature, that exceptional work is the now-classic book by Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid, which presents the tactical evolution of the game from its first chaotic steps up to the present day …