Want to understand politics in the last 25 years? Look at football

In the early 1990s a few ambitious politicians rejected redistribution for a ‘new capitalism’ based on equal opportunities and the free market. Some people became filthy rich and others turned to grassroots politics. Sound familiar?

By Shirsho Dasgupta for In Bed With Maradona, of the Guardian Sport Network

Philosopher, semiotician and lifelong football fan Jacques Derrida once declared: “Beyond the touchline, there is nothing.” Derrida did not mean that football is superior to the goings-on of life beyond the pitch but perhaps that everything that happens outside the stadium – politics, economics, or even art and culture – is automatically reflected inside it. The football pitch is a microcosm of life itself.

Since the last decade of the 20th century, consumption of football has been growing almost exponentially throughout the world. At its forefront is the Premier League empire, which, with the help of cable and later satellite TV, spread its tentacles throughout Africa and Asia a couple of years into the new millennium. The Spanish, German and Italian leagues soon followed.

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