Cultured Football #216
Pub Quiz Brawl. Sportswashing Fatigue. United Do It Again. Insert Name. Here We Go.
The fridge magnate and the football club
By Archie Willis for The Glasgow Bell
For me Queen’s Park FC, Scotland’s oldest league club, will forever be famous as the last amateur club playing in the Scottish professional leagues. To be honest, I had no idea that they’d turned professional. So this story of why they did so, how they were propelled up the leagues and the turmoil they now find themselves in was simply extraordinary. This is a weird and fascinating tale from a club where even a pub quiz can shake the foundations.
The sportswashing fatigue is real
By for
Often football and the emotion it elicits is so beautiful that other emotions simply get pushed aside. That’s why it is so good for sportswashing. PSG’s first Champions League title, a performance of youth, flair and unity, is also the crowning achievement of a Qatari project built on power, image, and deep pockets. As fans celebrate great goals and likeable players, the uncomfortable truths—migrant deaths, state control, moral fatigue—fade further into the background. The spectacle doesn’t need your approval. It just needs you to keep watching.
Manchester United: it got worse!
By for
Manchester United just finished 15th. Yet somehow, nobody’s THAT surprised. Despite massive revenues, they remain trapped in a loop of poor decisions, half-fixes, and a slow organisational decay. United talk about long-term vision, then sign players like Cunha and Mbeumo who feel more like patches than plans. The rebuild has to start properly sometime. But history suggests they’ll probably try to cheat the process again.
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Insert Town Name Here
By for
A white banner. Black letters. One town name. That’s all it takes for German fans to quietly make their mark at major tournaments. These minimalist signs—often just “Spenge” or “Bitburg” on a blank background—are a decades-old tradition, signaling not slogans or club allegiance, but pure presence: we're here, and here’s where we're from. It’s football support distilled to its simplest, most sincere form, where visibility beats vanity, and pride speaks in capital letters.
“Here we go”
By Professor Simon Chadwick for
The three words of “Here we go” can now define a transfer more convincingly than any club statement. That’s the power wielded by football’s new gatekeepers: networked insiders like Fabrizio Romano, whose tweets shape global fan sentiment, market expectations, and club narratives in real time. As transfers become content, and content becomes capital, the question isn’t just who moves where but who gets to say it first. What that says about the sport itself?
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In Case You Missed It Here’s Last Week’s Most Read: Time to Look Beyond Trophies
By Lewis Murray for 20 Minute Tims
Can you ever get tired of winning? For fans of most clubs, that’s an absurd question; at Celtic it is becoming an existential one. They are beyond dominant in Scotland and start the season with success almost guaranteed. And, if they don’t win the league, it will almost certainly be Rangers who do so. Moments of real exhilaration are conspicuously absent for them. Which leads to one obvious conclusion: Celtic (and Scottish football) need a reset.