:00:00. > :00:00.is not likely to be discovered up the chimney in decades to come. That
:00:00. > :00:00.is a great story. Now on BBC News it's time
:00:00. > :00:00.for Meet the Author. David Goldblatt is a writer,
:00:07. > :00:08.journalist, sociologist And last month he won the ?27,000
:00:09. > :00:12.William Hill Sports Book The Game Of Our Lives:
:00:13. > :00:17.The Meaning And Making Of English Football is a brilliant cultural
:00:18. > :00:19.history of what has happened to football - not just in England,
:00:20. > :00:22.but in Wales, Scotland, David Goldblatt, you stake a claim
:00:23. > :00:45.for football at the beginning You compare it to religion,
:00:46. > :00:49.to the theatre, to music, to soap operas,
:00:50. > :00:56.and you say it beats them all. About a million people
:00:57. > :01:01.are going to the Church of England services, on a weekly basis,
:01:02. > :01:04.but three quarters of a million are going to professional football
:01:05. > :01:07.on a weekly basis and that is not taking into account the great
:01:08. > :01:09.hinterland of playing Moreover, nobody is running home
:01:10. > :01:15.after the Church of England to catch If you want collective
:01:16. > :01:18.ecstasy, which is of course part of the religious
:01:19. > :01:22.experience, that makes something spiritual, OK, Protestant
:01:23. > :01:25.evangelical churches are doing their best
:01:26. > :01:27.in this country, but simply nothing can compare to,
:01:28. > :01:31.at its best, at its loudest, the collective ecstasy
:01:32. > :01:32.of football clubs and One of the points
:01:33. > :01:37.you make in the book is that in many cities now
:01:38. > :01:39.the football club is just about the last remaining
:01:40. > :01:42.expression of sort of We have such an extraordinarily
:01:43. > :01:48.overcentralised system That local government,
:01:49. > :01:52.once upon a time the centre of local pride, authority and
:01:53. > :01:57.distinctiveness, has Distinctive local traditions,
:01:58. > :02:03.local retailers, major local industries have often
:02:04. > :02:08.been bought up by foreign The media is fabulously
:02:09. > :02:15.centralised in this country. Football remains one
:02:16. > :02:17.of the most distinct, sometimes, as you say,
:02:18. > :02:21.the only representative of a neighbourhood of civic identity
:02:22. > :02:24.of any significant culture. What you have done in
:02:25. > :02:26.this book is you have looked at the way the game has
:02:27. > :02:29.developed, since the 1980s, and the arrival, of
:02:30. > :02:31.course, of the Premier And enormous amounts
:02:32. > :02:33.of television money, and the upside is that the Premier
:02:34. > :02:35.League in particular, and football generally,
:02:36. > :02:37.has got a lot richer. The stadiums have gotten
:02:38. > :02:42.more comfortable, safe. The football, you argue,
:02:43. > :02:44.has got better. Look on a thousand chat rooms
:02:45. > :02:52.of a thousand football clubs. Everywhere you will see the same
:02:53. > :02:55.disquiet, the atmosphere is not The average age of the Premier
:02:56. > :03:00.League audience, in the stadiums, In the mid-1980s, from
:03:01. > :03:04.what we can see of the data, Over a quarter of the stadium
:03:05. > :03:11.would have been over 21. As a 50-year-old man,
:03:12. > :03:14.I can tell you I am not the kind of person who makes
:03:15. > :03:16.for the ecstasy, the atmosphere, You need to have the youth there,
:03:17. > :03:23.and that is just one I mean, the idea that it is richer
:03:24. > :03:26.is automatically a good Who is making more money -
:03:27. > :03:33.the person that is having to stretch to pay for their season ticket
:03:34. > :03:35.at Anfield or the person who is being paid through
:03:36. > :03:37.some sort of offshore One of the eye opening
:03:38. > :03:43.revelations about this is the extraordinary financial
:03:44. > :03:48.state of many of the clubs. They have all this
:03:49. > :03:51.money and yet enormous A lot of them go bust,
:03:52. > :03:56.often more than once. What does that tell us
:03:57. > :03:59.about the management and ownership I am not a great fan
:04:00. > :04:05.of Sir Alan Sugar, but on this He described the economic
:04:06. > :04:08.model of English football As fast as the money goes in,
:04:09. > :04:13.it goes out the other way. Of course, these
:04:14. > :04:15.are institutions that The idea, and we talked
:04:16. > :04:19.as if football is a big business, but this
:04:20. > :04:22.is completely absurd. The people who run football clubs
:04:23. > :04:25.are not profit maximisers, They want as much good football,
:04:26. > :04:32.and the status and coverage that comes with that, for their money
:04:33. > :04:34.as they possibly can. Whether they make money or not
:04:35. > :04:38.from the club itself is a matter One of the changes you do note,
:04:39. > :04:44.one of the improvements, is that over racism
:04:45. > :04:47.in the game - crowds chanting insults at black players and so on -
:04:48. > :04:51.that has almost entirely gone but, you argue, there is still a lot
:04:52. > :04:57.of institutional racism in a game. You know, football managers
:04:58. > :05:02.in this country are drawn almost exclusively from
:05:03. > :05:09.the ranks of ex-players. 25% of players over the last,
:05:10. > :05:13.let's say a decade or so, are of mixed heritage or BME
:05:14. > :05:19.heritage in England. They make up approximately one to 4%
:05:20. > :05:22.of not just the managers but also the backroom coaching staff
:05:23. > :05:28.of English football. Now, usually under representation
:05:29. > :05:30.of Afro-Caribbeans and ethnic minorities in this
:05:31. > :05:33.country can be accounted for by questions of
:05:34. > :05:35.class, predominantly from a working-class background,
:05:36. > :05:37.or without educational qualifications, but neither of these
:05:38. > :05:42.things are a barrier to becoming Indeed, they are the sine qua
:05:43. > :05:47.non in this country, to have those kind of
:05:48. > :05:49.working-class roots. So I have to say, with 25%
:05:50. > :05:52.of the labour force, and one to 4% of actual places
:05:53. > :05:57.in the labour force, I mean, if that is not institutional
:05:58. > :06:01.racism on the part of boards and chairpeople in this country,
:06:02. > :06:09.I simply don't know what is. You are not only a writer
:06:10. > :06:11.and a football fan. You're also something
:06:12. > :06:12.of an activist. Earlier this year there
:06:13. > :06:15.was something you were instrumental in cold the Football Action Network,
:06:16. > :06:18.which was trying to apply pressure before the General Election to
:06:19. > :06:20.improve football. Specifically with reference
:06:21. > :06:24.to racism, but more generally, what would
:06:25. > :06:27.you as an activist like to see happen, and do you believe
:06:28. > :06:32.that it will happen? Well, I think, as with all things
:06:33. > :06:35.in politics, you get what The Premiership model,
:06:36. > :06:44.but over-commercialised model that we have now,
:06:45. > :06:46.is actually just one amongst many ways of
:06:47. > :06:48.organising football. I mean if I could just say
:06:49. > :06:52.there was one thing that I wanted to change, I think we need to change
:06:53. > :06:55.the legal status of football clubs. At the moment, they are treated
:06:56. > :06:58.as any common or garden limited company, but I think the idea idea
:06:59. > :07:01.that these things could be privately owned or unregulated
:07:02. > :07:05.is simply absurd. You know, it is not
:07:06. > :07:16.the stadium, because that Football clubs are the collective
:07:17. > :07:22.creation of the fans The accumulated cultural capital
:07:23. > :07:26.of narratives and meanings invested in that club, without
:07:27. > :07:28.which the whole thing is meaningless The idea that that kind
:07:29. > :07:31.of collective cultural capital can be bought and owned, by anyone -
:07:32. > :07:35.be they foreign or not - seems to me completely absurd
:07:36. > :07:37.and a category mistake. And these institutions need
:07:38. > :07:39.to be legally protected. So that they cannot be
:07:40. > :07:41.treated the way in which David Goldblatt, thank
:07:42. > :08:02.you very much indeed. This weekend the weather is going to
:08:03. > :08:06.be a little bit mixed. Then again, when is it not? The north of the
:08:07. > :08:11.country, certainly know the wells, northern England into some whale --
:08:12. > :08:12.rain, possibly