Philosophy Football FC is an amateur football club based in London, UK. It has a history of political engagement and activism in the UK and Europe. The club has played since 1995 in a number of London amateur leagues. Its most distinctive identity, however, remains its ‘philosophical’ outlook, demonstrated by its attempts to promote internationalism on its regular European tours, its campaigns against the domination of football by large corporations and its political and cultural events in and around London.
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Philosophy Football FC was founded in February 1995, shortly after the T-shirt company of the same name had created its first shirt, adorned with the words of existentialist philosopher Albert Camus: ‘All that I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football.’
The idea of 'philosophy football' was conceived by Geoff Andrews and Mark Perryman, following a Tottenham Hotspur versus Queens Park Rangers match in the English Premier League in October 1994. Andrews and Perryman had collaborated as Communist Party activists and writers and were both involved with the influential political and cultural magazine Marxism Today. Perryman, together with graphic designer Hugh Tisdale, went on to launch a company selling a range of such T-shirts and running the Raise the Flag initiative.[1] Andrews, meanwhile, founded the accompanying football team. Perryman summed up the philosophy behind the venture in 2003, saying, "If I was a Liverpool fan I would much rather wear something with the words of You'll Never Walk Alone on it than Carlsberg."[2]
By the time Philosophy Football FC played its first game at Battersea Park in early 1995, the company had produced another shirt, this time bearing the words of former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. This shirt bore Shankly's words: ‘The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life’. This first game against Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) resulted in a 4-0 defeat. In this game, all the Philosophy Football FC outfield players wore the red Shankly shirt with number 4 on the back. It was the first of many defeats in the early days of the club. As the Independent reported, the players’ political philosophy took precedence over their playing ability.[3]
Philosophy Football FC joined the Music Association League for the 1995-96 season, encountering such opponents as Camden Musicians, The Mean Fiddler, Black Vinyl Hearts, Time Out and London Weekend Television. They ended the season in last position, which earned them a trophy adorned with the words: ‘Gone to the Dogs. Bottom of the League. Philosophy Football’. Performances improved slowly over the next couple of seasons, partly due to the recruitment of exiled members of the African National Congress, before they returned to South Africa following the collapse of the apartheid regime there.
The club joined a new Sunday league for the 1999-2000 season and went on to win the Grafton Millennium League in successive years (2001–02 and 2002–03).[4] Following the second league title, the club sought a new challenge and enrolled in the London Midweek League, playing their home matches at Paddington Recreation Ground in Maida Vale, and winning the league’s first division title in their first season.[5]
The club was promoted to the league's premier division, but struggled to compete at this higher level, and was relegated back to the first division of the London Midweek League in 2006. They continued to play in this league until 2009, when they returned to Sunday football and re-joined the re-titled Grafton and West London Millennium League, finishing in mid-table in its first season.
Philosophy Football FC's first tour was to Zürich in June 2000 during the UEFA European Football Championship. They played FC Levante Wibi, a team born from a socialist cooperative restaurant in the 1970s. The tour, like all succeeding ones, was organised with the aim of promoting internationalism and fostering a spirit of critical dissent in opposition to corporate culture. It was covered, as were PFFC's early years, in the book Insular denken written by player and journalist Stefan Howald.[6]
In August 2000, sports journalist and writer Filippo Ricci joined the club after moving to London as correspondent for Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. Ricci was to introduce a number of Italians to the club and instigate a series of tours to Italy. In December 2000, the club made their first of three tours to Rome, drawing 2-2 against the Italian journalists national team. In 2004, the club returned to Rome, playing in a match to commemorate the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Stadio dei Marmi, next door to the Stadio Olimpico. All the players wore Philosophy Football's Pasolini shirt, carrying the words: ‘Dopo la letteratura e l’eros, il calcio è uno dei grandi piaceri’ (‘After literature and sex, football is one of the great pleasures’).[7][8]
In June 2005, to mark the club's tenth anniversary, the club travelled to Paris, playing a team of journalists from France Football and L'Equipe.[9] The players, dressed in the respective shirts, later re-enacted an existential exchange between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre in the café Les Deux Magots.
Later that year, in October 2005, Philosophy Football FC returned to Rome to participate in a tournament (‘La Partita Di Pierpaolo’) at the Campo Francesca Gianni, commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Pasolini’s death. The tournament was covered widely in the Italian press, including an interview with Fabio Capello, manager of the England national football team, in which he reminisced about his friend, Pasolini.[10] Three other sides competed: a team of Pasolini actors (‘Pasoliniana’) led by Ninetto Davoli, who appeared in several of Pasolini’s films; the Italian writers’ team Osvaldo Soriano, captained by Paolo Sollier; and the Squadra Nazionale dei Registi, the Italian film directors team, coached by Alessandro Piva. PFFC were beaten by the Pasoliniana on penalties in the final.[11][12]
In October 2006, the team went to Madrid to mark the seventieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. The team played in the colours of the International Brigades as they took on a team of the Madrid football correspondents at Real Madrid’s training ground, Ciudad Deportiva. In 2007, Philosophy Football FC participated in a ‘Slow Foot’ tournament in Bra, Piedmont during Slow Food’s international cheese festival, adapting Slow Food’s ‘good, clean and fair’ principles to football.[13][14] They lost in the final to Fetamania, a team of Greek ex-professional footballers who in retirement had set up a network of feta cheese producers.[15] In May 2008, Philosophy Football FC returned to Zurich to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the revolts of May '68 and took part in an alternative European Championship with teams from Torino, Rotterdam, Zurich and London.[16]
From its formation, Philosophy Football FC, like its parent company, was committed to changing football culture, and has organised and participated in several cultural and political events, mainly in London.
In 1996, Philosophy Football organised Europe United, a popular fan event on London’s South Bank held immediately before the European Championships.[17] The event featured a European Fans Assembly, a football fashion show and men’s and women’s four-a-side tournaments played out on a hastily constructed pitch in the depths of the Royal Festival Hall. The tournament was organised by the club, for whom then FA chief executive Graham Kelly turned out, dressed in an Antonio Gramsci shirt and scoring a consolation goal against Fantasy Football.[18]
The event was repeated in June 1998, again using the Royal Festival Hall, under the title 'A Celebration of the People's Game'. Highlights included discussion sessions with George Best and George Weah, the first African player to be named FIFA World Footballer of the Year, as well as music, theatre productions and quizzes.[19]
In May 2002, the club organised ‘Football in the Communities’ in Camden Town, London, in conjunction with Camden Council. The event, which brought together nine men’s and four women’s teams from the various communities of London, was coordinated by Raj Chada, a member of the club and a Labour Party councillor on the Council. The tournament, which used football to celebrate London’s cultural diversity, was the team's first explicitly political event.
Similar events were to follow. In May 2005, the club organised a three-way tournament to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. The tournament, entitled 'Never Forget, Never Again', included a visiting team from Rome. Club manager Andrews, interviewed at the tournament, said that, 'the defeat of fascism needs to be remembered for the sacrifices made by so many. It's also a reminder that neo-fascism and neo-nazism remain a dangerous threat today. Football can play an important part in challenging racism and xenophobia as it reaches so many groups.'[20]
The international side of PFFC's philosophy has been discussed in several articles in Swiss newspapers.[21]
In May 2010, Philosophy Football FC collaborated with the Whitechapel Art Gallery in organising a three-sided football tournament to coincide with the 2010 General Election.[22][23] Three-sided football, devised by the Danish situationist Asger Jorn, is played on a hexagonal pitch. In contrast to the adversarial nature of the conventional game (equated by situationists with the realities of the class struggle), three-sided football seeks to promote alliances; the winning team is that which concedes least, rather than scores more goals. Philosophy Football FC, representing the Labour Party, won the tournament by not conceding any goals, compared to the Conservatives’ two and the Liberal Democrats’ three.
Although the match was centred around domestic politics, it received coverage beyond the UK.[24] The overseas interest soon resulted in an invitation to take part in a three-sided match in Madrid in May 2011, the first ever such game played in Spain.[25] The three teams, Philosophy Football FC and two Madrid-based sides (the X-Men and the Existentialists), nominally represented three philosophical traditions: solidarity, satire and internationalism. The match, played at the Stadio Centro Deportivo Municipal la Elipa in Madrid, resulted in a 5-5-3 win for the X-Men.[26][27]