ABSTRACT
This article is concerned with the ways in which English football clubs may be enabled, by the current UK public reform agenda, to insert themselves more deeply into the communities of which they claim to be an active part. Football clubs attach importance to community engagement, with charitable work, soccer schools and other outreach and inclusion programmes constituting a typical part of the offering of football clubs at all levels of the pyramid.2 It has been argued, however, that existing models of community engagement, particularly by English Premier League clubs, can be less about improving access and inclusion and more about talent spotting and marketing. Indeed, evident contradictions between (many) clubs’ community inclusion claims and their aggressive market-driven, corporate direction have led elite-level English football in the Premier League era to be characterized as ‘the
Little United is a term occasionally used to describe FC United of Manchester; it is a reference to the club and fans being a breakaway from Manchester United (Big United).
