Football has become a social reality of our time. You may never have set foot in a stadium or kept up to date with match results or league rankings. You may know the names of only a few players – those that you cannot ignore – and you may be underwhelmed by the spectacular brilliance of their universal presence. Even so, you cannot imagine a public space without football, because it is everywhere, all the time. There are even those who regard it as an infection that spreads throughout the body of society or believe it to be a new, equally alienating ‘opium of the people’.