Author Archives: Stuart Laycock

It would be fair to say that the question of Britain’s contribution to world history is a pretty controversial one right now. Obviously Britain has contributed hugely to the world in areas like, for instance, literature and science. However, people have also become much more aware of the damaging effects of colonialism.

However, one aspect of British culture and its effect on the world that has perhaps not received the study it deserves is football. It came from Britain and yet today, it is played all over the world. It was British, and yet today, for each country, football is theirs, it is part of their community and their heritage.

Obviously there are some negative aspects of football culture around the world. Homophobia is an obvious one, but there is also still racism and sexism in football, and crowd violence is still a problem sometimes. The Qatar World Cup is, of course, hugely controversial. Yet set against that, is the huge fun, passion and excitement that football has created, the sense of community pride, and, of course, the positive physical benefits of great exercise. There is a lot in there that Lib Dems can readily support.

So how did we get from people kicking a ball in Victorian Britain, to the situation today? My brother Phil (recently retired history teacher and massive Chelsea fan) and I were aware, obviously that football came to the world from Britain, and we knew a bit about how it reached some of the nearby countries like France and Germany, but we didn’t know how it got from here to much more distant places, and some of the less major footballing powers. So we set off to find out. And because we didn’t know what was happening in, for instance, women’s football in Argentina today, we set off to find out a bit about that as well.