Coincidence? Potentially. But are you willing to take a chance on these boots knowing six top, healthy players are all going to spend a serious amount of time on the sidelines as a result? The authors use statistical data in an attempt to explain, among other things, the performance of the England national team. Their findings conclude that England’s win percentage, between 1970 and 2007, is on average 67 per cent, never lower than 62 per cent, and never higher than 70 per cent. A consistent and credible performance but, considering Brazil win on average 80 per cent of their games, England’s win percentage is not enough to achieve international glory. From 1981 to 2001, it was the tenth best in the World, hardly grounds for being labelled underachievers.

Statistical data may be able to debunk the idea of England underperforming on the international stage, however, for many fans, the sense that the anointed ‘Golden Generation’ underachieved still lingers. The final remnants of this crop of players, in the form of Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney, face their potential last stand on Thursday against Uruguay. The sense of underachievement is undoubtedly felt more in relation to Rooney than his teammates. As fans eagerly await the return of English top-flight football, the betting odds offer insights into the favorites, underdogs and potential surprises that could unfold throughout the season. The English Premier League is played at a pace only matched by sugar-crazed toddlers. The fittest teams who have the best benches and best injury prevention invariably win. However there is the extra part as explained to me by one source working with an Premier League club, The story of the development of football is, in essence, the story of industrialisation and modernisation. England was the first country to experience mass industrialisation and through its global spanning formal and informal empire, the game grew. Throughout this vast empire, from Bilbao to Belfast, Glasgow to St Petersburg and Budapest to Sao Paulo, the spread of football can be sourced to the British expatriates organising games amongst themselves, as curious natives looked on

Aside from all being Premier League players, what did all six of these have in common? They were wearing Nike football boots at the time. Four of them with Nike’s Magista boots and the other two wearing Mercurial Vapor X. But even with Dutch know-how, he has learned from cycling expertise that they now need to cycle off. Push more and you risk healthy young men suffering from cardiac arrest. I’ve gone into this before and nothing has changed.

More worrying than that was a recent report published by the Daily Mail highlighting six Premier League players suffering from serious injuries in a space of six weeks earlier this season – with each player wearing a pair of Nike football boots. Blatter at the time went on to talk about the attractiveness of the English game to billionaire investments and how it’s out of control; Erling Haaland has already netted seven goals in the opening month of the new season, and more are surely on the horizon. Betting against Haaland breaking his record for the most goals in a single season seems risky. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side finished 12 points behind City last season and will be keen to try overhaul their noisy neighbours this time around. With the revenue they make from broadcasting as well as having been able to grow their brand over the past 30 years puts any team that is part of the league at an advantageous position.Alice from Deptford Ravens comments, ‘this question often comes up around how to find joy in activism, to make it sustainable’. With football, Alice reflects, ‘it’s kind of the other way around, football is the joy and from there you can work activism into it’. Alice’s posters for the tournament centred on bright colours and playfulness, balancing joy and activist art to support the strike, ‘When designing the posters, I went for fun, joyful illustrations, using the protestors’ placards to communicate the more ‘serious’ messages about the strike’. Alice set up the Deptford Ravens football team six months ago, ‘we already have this spirit of helping each other emotionally by having fun in difficult times’. Alice affirms that ‘Deptford is a very radical, engaged and caring community and those things are my values too. In Deptford Ravens, we make a point of supporting each other. We want to extend that support to other people in our community too’. This has been achieved thanks to the club’s new owners, the 49ers Enterprises’ and their stance on retaining Leeds’ best players. Of course, the counterargument is that if they were that good, Leeds would still be in the Premier League.