ABSTRACT
The body of evidence analysing the potential of football as a vehicle to deliver health outcomes has developed substantially. Football arguably provides the largest potential global reach of all sports and often receives significant national amounts of government investment. Despite this, the policy and politics of a country can potentially hamper the implementation of football for health strategies, which creates issues particularly in community (or grassroots) football contexts. This chapter offers a brief insight into the challenges of the implementation of Football for health in the policy and politics context of England, measured against the political environment found in Denmark. This includes the potential missed opportunity of policymakers in England to capitalise on football as a vehicle to attend to the health agenda. The chapter concludes with a development of the Krustrup and Krustrup (2018) model for Football is Medicine, calling for more engagement and action at a policy level.
