ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the legacy of Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard's singular 'French social theory' together and apart, and how it might apply to people contemporary football culture. It considers the past and potential future contribution to leisure studies and cultural studies of these two key theorists, Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard and how they connect to 'low modernist' and 'realist' fiction writing on football culture. There is more productivity to relocate them within the bifurcation of cosmpolis/claustropolis, the concept of 'claustropolitanism' and links to 'low modernism' and 'realism'. Cosmopolis is being replaced by claustropolis suggests Virilio, wary of his late friend Baudrillard's own enigmatic statements on the masses, football and power when he was alive. The agony of power is a collection of three original texts written in 2005 which were read at various conferences around the world, together with an interview with French cultural magazine chronic'art from that same year.
