Kick off

"All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football"

- Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

Albert Camus, the French-Algerian writer and Nobel laureate forms the inspiration for this blog. Not only is it his often quoted insistence of a link between football and morality, but also it is his involvement in, and criticism of, the media that is important.

Camus' football experience comes from his time as goal keeper for Racing Universitaire de’Alger from 1928-30. His media experience derives from World War II as editor of the underground resistance newspaper Combat. Beyond these experiences was also his proposed notion that the media needed the media. That is, that society would benefit from a media format that reported solely on the media to spotlight errors, inconsistencies and the (mis)-use of editorial policies and opinions in order to manipulate the interpretaion of information.

This is the naked purpose of this website.

We wish to present alternative points of view about football. We wish to present points of view that differ from existing news outlets, football magazines and fan forums. We wish to engage with football on a level that allows us to create, learn and teach metaphorically about life, morals, power, beauty and failure in a way that Camus has pioneered. We also wish to re-represent the media and to expose hypocrisies, failings and manipulations. We accept all things and all formats of interpretaion and expression. We accept danger, glory and infinite ruination. We expect emotion.

Now that the stage is set, we offer a caution.

In an interview with Camus' daughter Catherine, Camus was quoted as warning us that "historical criteria and historical reasoning [are] not the only things to take into account, and that they [aren't] all powerful, [and] that history [can] always be wrong about man."