Injury Time: Football in a state of emergency

In Injury Time, award-winning sports historian David Goldblatt argues that we cannot understand the UK’s decade of austerity, Brexit, and social upheaval without looking at our national game. From an elite Premier League serving as an unregulated playground for billionaires to the tragic collapse of grassroots community clubs, Goldblatt charts a nation running on borrowed time. Yet, as political leadership failed, football became the frontline of resistance—captured through Marcus Rashford’s fight against child poverty, players taking the knee, and the Lionesses offering a progressive alternative to the toxic nationalism of the Wembley riots. Brilliant, urgent, and deeply analytical, Injury Time is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand the fractured state of contemporary society.