Philosophy and Football review

Enjoyed attending the launch of the new book Philosophy and Football at the Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town. It's the story of Philosophy Football FC and, rather sadly, I was the oldest former-player to be there, having briefly appeared as a firm but fair James Collins-style centre back in the 1990s. It made me feel almost as old as Mark Noble.

Not many Sunday league sides have fielded players from 26 countries, toured 22 cities in Europe, and played on 31 obscure London pitches during their 30-odd years of existence. Philosophy Football FC started off as philosophers who were not very good at football and ended up as footballers who were not so good at philosophy. 

The team was an offshoot of the Philosophy Football t-shirt operation, birthchild of Mark Perryman and Hugh Tisdale, which began with a Camus t-shirt reading: “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.”

 
The side is managed by academic turned gaffer Geoff Andrews, assisted for a long time by Channel 4 Italian football pundit Filippo Ricci of Gazzetta dello Sport. Filippo initially shocked his teammates by bringing a hairdryer and wearing flip flops to avoid mud in the changing rooms. 

Philosophy Football FC have played in Camus, Cantona and Shankly shirts, among others, and inspired memorable cries of “mark Wilson!” when turning out in 11 Harold Wilson red shirts (maybe they really did have 11 left-wingers). The side disliked modern corporate football and attracted radical players, but sometimes came unstuck against more capitalistic rivals in the London leagues such as Warner Brothers, Air France and Inter Aztec. But they won three titles after their first few struggling seasons. 

Unlike Brian Clough (another PF t-shirt) they experimented with situationism and tried three-sided football (covered by the Guardian in 2013). On an Italian tour to celebrate murdered radical director Pasolini they played against actors from his films and appeared in Monty Python shirts bearing the words of the "philosophers' football match" sketch. They also printed a special Pasolini shirt with his quote, “After literature and sex, football is one of the great pleasures.” Surely a statement Big Sam and Tony Pulis would agree with. 

But sometimes high philosophy came up against the earthier charms of Sunday league football. This bunch of radicals almost sparked a mass arrest in their early days at Regent's Park when the showers were turned off at 4pm promptly by a jobsworth caretaker and the muddy players turned them on again. The parks police were called and one player commented, “We’ll go quietly but not cleanly.”

Sunday leaguers will also identify with the player who managed to get across Italy without a passport or money having been robbed, and still managed to make the side and score. And there can’t be many club secretaries who have been told they are “a liar who speaks with the corpse of Franco in his mouth” by anarchists when trying to organise a three-sided world cup tournament in a reclaimed Madrid bullring. All in a day's philosophising for the Camus-loving side. 

Philosophy and Football by Geoff Andrews and Filippo Ricci is published by Pitch, price £16.99.