Moving the Goalposts - by Nick Fishwick (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

During the twentieth century, football became not only England's definitive national sport but also a lucrative globalized business. How did this change come about? What did it all mean to the players, fans, media and the country at large?

Moving the Goalposts is a lively history of how English football was transformed in the twentieth century. It paints a picture of a game initially defined by provincial respectability and social conservatism, showing how those values were increasingly challenged - for both good and ill - by elite amateurs, popular transgressors and the growing influence of money. Nick Fishwick's vivid account is brought alive through the human stories of football in the raw, from the lower league minnows to the national team, from the pompous but dedicated local officials to the players who outsmarted their clubs to seek fame and fortune.

Based on an intensive study of the records of professional clubs great and small, as well as the memoirs and reminiscences of players, managers and officials, this book will fascinate and enlighten any fan of English football.

Review Quotes

"Moving the Goalposts is a brilliant addition to the history of English football. Underwritten by original archival research, it evokes the worlds of football administration, club boards and lower league terraces and dressing rooms with more depth than any work hitherto. From the sanctimonious rows over the pools and Sunday league football, to the precarious lives of transgressive football stars, this is a heady brew for anyone who wants to not just know, but to touch early twentieth-century English football culture."
David Goldblatt, author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football

"Nick Fishwick has rewritten the history of English football from 1900 to the 1960s from top to bottom; from professional clubs to park teams; from officials and directors to the legions of professionals and amateurs who played the game and the men who refereed them. Moving the Goalposts is sharply written and deeply researched - an invaluable contribution to the history of the national game, embedded in England's changing industrial and urban landscape, abounding in new insights and forgotten heroes on the pitch and off."
Richard Holt, author of Sport and the British: A Modern History

"Moving the Goalposts is a study of a crucial period in the history of English football: from its origins as a late nineteenth-century native sport to the game which is now the basis of international football - probably the most important sport in the world. It draws on much new and fascinating archival material on the smaller clubs - some now gone - as well as the great clubs that dominate the modern Premier League. The book, furthermore, is also written with style and wit."
Ross McKibbin, author of Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951

About the Author

Nick Fishwick is a social historian and national security expert and writes regularly for The Cipher Brief. He was a director general at the British foreign service, serving in Nigeria, Turkey and Afghanistan and now chairs the David Nott Foundation. His previous book, English Football and Society 1910-1950, published in 1989, was praised by History as 'consistently interesting and insightful'.