George Orwell did not get many things wrong, or badly wrong anyway. But his 1945 essay about the dangers of international football, “The Sporting Spirit”, has not aged well. International sport, football especially, was just “war minus the shooting”. And yet, even if attendances were not restricted by a pandemic, this most elaborate European football championships yet would be unlikely to contribute much to international ill-will. The past 76 years of relative peace, most of which Orwell didn’t live to see, was probably not the result of the ever-increasing number of cross-border football matches.

Source: The Irish Times June 10, 2021 17:02 UTC