The curtain has come down on the Football Scholars Forum’s summer series featuring David Goldblatt and his sparkling new book, The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-first Century. A cumulative attendance of more than 50 people from Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe made it the most popular event in FSF’s ten-year history.
On July 14, 25 participants discussed the final chapters, which focused on FIFA corruption, Putin’s Russia and the 2018 World Cup. Historians Simon Rofe and Matthew Pauly helped steer the discussion with opening comments and questions.
“It’s the hardest book I’ve every written, in all sorts of ways,” Goldblatt observed. “A combination of Brexit and COVID kind of ate its public reception alive,” he said. “That was quite hard to process and this [series] has been a fabulous corrective to that. [. . .] It means a lot to have you read it, to know that it held your attention, entertained you and maybe enlightened you along the way.”
Indeed, the series was so extraordinarily fulfilling that we (almost) forgot about the postponement of Euro 2020.
Click below to listen to the audio recording of the July 14th session (personal/educational use only).
Looking ahead to the 2020-21 season, our first convo will feature James Montague and his new book, 1312: Among the Ultras. See you then!
