Football standards
Sin The quality of English Association football is currently the worst in its long history. The truth is that football has become largely a lost art, and consequently this great national game in its true context as a major working class art form is virtually extinct.
Between wars British soccer achieved that critical balancebetween manly aggressiveness and football skill which made it the best in the world. For fifty years or more it provided the main if not the only outlet for artistic and recreational self-expression open to British working class boys. Its appeal in conditions of working class poverty and general deprivation was as a game demanding no expensive gear such as cricket bats and the like, but simply a few yards of space and something to kick.
Nowadays due to the affluence and better living conditions of the Welfare State boys are deficient in this early training and the future mediocracy is further ensured by the practice of presenting them at an early age with a large ball and all the gear, and lots of bad advice in football magazines.
The fact is that with changing social patterns football no longer has to meet the need of working-class aspirations for self-expression upon which the quality and vitality of the game is dependent, and it has therefore outlived its role.
Such great institutions do not of course become extinct overnight and a natural impetus will carry it along for • a few years, but the lack of skill, refuge in violence, and impotence of the present game, are signs that it is already playing in borrowed time. W. Hayward-Broomfield Westcote, 260 Weyhill Road, Andover, Hants
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