You'd never last in South America. Fans take their radios to the stadium so they can think what the commentators think.

You'd never last in South America. Fans take their radios to the stadium so they can think what the commentators think.

Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.

Chelsea's players, coaches and agents are now football's wealthiest millionaires. Surely the billions taken from the Russian people by an oligarch in questionable privatisations couldn't be better spent?

Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.

Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.