Football / David Goldblatt
‘I love the feeling, the collective cry, the rhythm of chanting, the pasties – all of it’
Bristol Rovers has a strong famous fan base – from Roni Size to Jeffrey Archer – but few will know one acclaimed author who lives just a stone’s throw from the Memorial Stadium.
That man is David Goldblatt, an exiled Londoner, who came to Bristol 15 years ago.
Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and Sports Story of the Year at Foreign Press Association in 2015, the internationally-acclaimed writer is known for his coverage of sport, history and politics – and his latest venture is a new podcast series for Al Jazeera.
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Eccentric, opinionated and funny, with a sharp mind, Goldblatt watches football all around the globe and writes about it – not your usual results stuff, but about sport and its impact on people, on sociology and politics.
In the last 18 months, he has worked on stories in Hungary, Nigeria, Argentina, Uruguay, Abu Dhabi, and New York. He went from watching football in LA to the Memorial Stadium in a week, laughingly saying: “I can contain nothing but all multitudes.”
He doesn’t go in the press area, or a hospitality box, he stands behind the goal in the Blackthorn terrace, with his view often obscured.
“It’s a buzz man – I love the feeling, the collective cry, the rhythm of chanting, the pasties – all of it.”
Why Rovers? This is a man who can get a press pass into any football club in the world, so being a non-Bristolian, who follows Spurs in London, surely he would be drawn to the more prestigious sites of Ashton Gate?
But he says that when he first arrived in the city, a friend suggested he check Rovers out and he was hooked from day one.
He was drawn in by “a beautiful sunny day that was full of hope and expectation and Rovers won easily.”
Most of Goldblatt’s books are written in an office in his home off Gloucester Road between smoking roll ups, doing yoga, and taking breaks wandering his garden.
This little part of north Bristol is where some of the most seminal books ever written on sport can be found.
His football book – The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football is considered the archetype book on football history and is studied all across sport departments worldwide.
Other books include Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil, the award-winning The Game of Our Lives, and his most recent: The Games : A global History of the Olympics. They are all leaders in their field and read worldwide.
Goldblatt’s new venture is a podcast that carries on his trademark original and groundbreaking content for AJ+1 (Al Jazeera America).
Seven episodes and three series of Game of Our lives have been commissioned – looking at “worldwide football, world politics, and word culture”. The first series started in March, while another will be released during the World Cup in Russia.
The series includes Goldblatt interviewing Godwin Enakhena, who heads up a Nigerian Pentecostal football team; a look at the rise of football in India with Supriya Nair; the launch of football food banks at Liverpool.
There will also be one local story, featuring Bristol University professor John Foot, on Italian football and why the team failed to qualify for the World Cup since 1958.
Goldblatt spends a third of each year lecturing at a university in Los Angeles on football and politics, but says he will be back watching his beloved Rovers soon.
Delivered with his usual dry and sartorial manner, he recounts the visit of Shrewsbury this season: “It was a bitingly cold day, and I didn’t want to be there. But not just me, all the crowd didn’t, no one did. Even both teams, and officials really couldn’t be bothered.
“The ball went out of play and no one cared. No one was bothered. A lull of apathy filled the air. I left early before the final whistle.”
It’s this ability to deconstruct and extract the strange ritualistic appeal of football, with all its frustrations, that makes Goldblatt brilliant.
Listen to Game of Our Lives’ most recent episodes at www.gameofourlives.fm.
Main photo by Stephan Rohl (www.stephan-roehl.de)
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