This Is Football shows the ‘magic of the game’ is not just a sales pitch | Barney Ronay


For once, emotions are genuinely stirred by the story of Rwanda and how the game helped heal its divisions

It can be hard in England to get a feel for the scale, the power and – yes really – the beauty of the Premier League’s vast global reach. Probably this has something to do with the way it is reflected back, most often through the wild frontier, the cranks’ rodeo, the Hobby Horse Derby of social media.

More toxic still is the way the Premier League’s commercial success is so often described as simply this and nothing more, couched in tones of crowing economic triumphalism that reduces its devotees to numbers, eyeballs, units of desire.

Related: Back to the future: Bradford bring heritage numbers to English football

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