Simon Kuper Quotations

People are enormously disappointed because if there's one country that really expected to be going and has a high opinion of its own qualities, it's Holland.

It's partly due to the overload on modern players, ... All the Dutch are playing in the Champions League or in top European leagues. So it's last week Barcelona, this week Dublin, next week Milan. It's just not that exciting.

In the United States, there's a strong taboo against racism; in England it's only happened in the past 15 years. In Spain and Eastern Europe, there is none of this revulsion among most people. There are few people of color, so a black player on the field is a new thing. In that sense, soccer is seen by racists as the vanguard of the world outside sweeping into town.

Even before 2007, this half of a small island was the richest football country on earth. In 2005-2006 the Premiership's total revenue was about £1.4bn, 40 per cent more than its nearest rival, Italy's Serie A. That was before take-off. Now foreign television channels are sending so much cash that the Premiership is expected to take in nearly £1.8bn this season. Even the team that finishes bottom of the table (Wigan might be a good bet) will get £26.8m from TV. That's more than all of Argentine or Belgian football put together.

I remember World Cups in 1982 and 1986 when we weren't there and we'd support Belgium or Denmark, .. They had some players who played in Holland and they were a bit like the Dutch.

Football is not merely a small business, it's also a bad one. Anyone who spends any time inside football soon discovers that just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business.

It seems that soccer tournaments create those relationships: people gathered together in pubs and living rooms, a whole country suddenly caring about the same event. A World Cup is the sort of common project that otherwise barely exists in modern societies.

You'd never last in South America. Fans take their radios to the stadium so they can think what the commentators think.

Other than sports, only war and catastrophe can create this sort of national unity.

Chelsea's players, coaches and agents are now football's wealthiest millionaires. Surely the billions taken from the Russian people by an oligarch in questionable privatisations couldn't be better spent?

Whereas fanatic is usually a pejorative word, a Fan is someone who has roots somewhere.