INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In extraordinary, unprecedented circumstances, my strict Saturday routine is forcibly changed on March 14, 2020
My afternoon is an open goal, as will will be the rest of them for the foreseeable future: football across the United Kingdom has been
suspended due to the coronavirus.After as little as two hours into my football-free time I anxiously twiddle my thumbs and, like many
others, look for ways to fill the gap
FIFA and Football Manager are fun, but no replacement for the real thing
To give you an idea of how desperate people like me get for any kind of competition, Southampton FC played Manchester City on Twitter, at
The drama from the writer best known for Downton Abbey traces the origins of football in the late 19th century
It ticks the only box I need in this trying time: it has football in it, at least an impression of it
The English Game sees Fergus Suter (Kevin Guthrie) travel from their Glaswegian home to the Lancashire town of Darwen to play professional
football and win the FA Cup, the oldest national football competition in the world, for the working man
The trouble is, in 1879, being paid to play is forbidden by competition rules, in this amateur-only sport devised by gentlemen in the
pounding the turf, are a reassuringly warm blanket at first
Etonians, Arthur Kinnaird (Edward Holcroft) even looks a bit like Chelsea forward Olivier Giroud, if you squint.But this is a world away
charging towards their target almost like a wedge formation
I tried to suspend my disbelief, to forget that these are actors pretending to play football, but they sought to doggedly remind me of that
fact at every opportunity
worse by this weird, guttural chanting during matches
It also materialises during supposedly tense scenes off the pitch to indicate that we should be feeling something
Seriously, two football clubs tactically placing their crests inside a three-by-three grid is closer to the beautiful game than this.Away
then moves to another club for more money
Netflix)Instead we follow relationships and character arcs that are somehow both under-developed and dwelled on for too long
After five minutes in Darwen, Suter has already made friends for life there, apparently, and the kindly Kinnaird almost immediately
transforms from odious posho to saccharine saviour of the working man.Admittedly there is something interesting buried beneath all the
Is it for the rich who play for fun, or the working poor that cobble together what little they have each week to support their adopted
professionals threaten to beat them at their own game
the lucrative TV money that entails.While The English Game momentarily encourages football fans like me to reflect on the origins of the
Yet I binged it all in one go anyway, and I hate myself for it
