The Game of Our Lives: The English Premier League and the Making of Modern Britain

The Game of Our Lives is a masterly portrait of contemporary Britain through the lens of soccer. In the last two decades soccer in the United Kingdom has made the transition from a peripheral dying sport to the very center of British popular culture, from an economic basket-case to a booming entertainment industry that has conquered the world. What does it mean when soccer becomes so central to the private and public lives of the British people? Has it enriched this island nation or impoverished it?

From the goals, to the players, to the managers, to the money, David Goldblatt describes how the English Premier League was forged by Margaret Thatcher's Britain and an alliance of the big clubs — Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur — the Football Association and Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV. He identifies the real winners and losers in this extraordinary period, and explains how soccer has closely mirrored the wider political and social scene.

Goldblatt argues that no social phenomenon tracks the momentous economic, social and political changes of post-Thatcherite Britain in a more illuminating manner than soccer, and The Game of Our Lives provides the definitive social history of the EPL — most popular soccer league in the world.