ABSTRACT
This book contains some criticisms of the football industry and of the people who run it. While not all of these criticisms will be regarded as valid by everyone who takes the trouble to read it, one fervently hopes that they will be accepted in the spirit in which they are intended – as a contribution to a constructive debate on what the game has become and where it goes from here. The aim of this last chapter is to redress the balance somewhat by acknowledging the value of some thoroughly worthwhile initiatives in which football has taken the lead in recent years, and to suggest ways in which those efforts could be built upon. Some of the issues discussed here are practices that many sports organisations would prefer the general public not to know about, because they have failed to deal with them effectively, but they are areas where ‘football people’ have made their presence felt.
