25 May - 1 Jun 2008

A thought about football from Manchester University's literary critic Terry Eagleton:

"If you were to ask what provides some meaning in life nowadays for a great many people, especially men, you could do worse than reply 'Football'… Sport, and in Britain football in particular, stands in for all those noble causes – religious faith, national sovereignty, personal honour, ethnic identity – for which over the centuries, people have been prepared to go to their deaths. Sport involves tribal loyalties and rivalries, symbolic rituals, fabulous legends, iconic heroes, epic battles, aesthetic beauty, physical fulfilment, intellectual satisfaction, sublime spectaculars, and a profound sense of belonging… It is sport, not religion, which is now the opium of the people."

Terry Eagleton (John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester; from 'The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction', OUP, 2007)