Football has become the country’s soap opera. It’s a point David Goldblatt makes in his new book Injury Time: it seems absurd to think now that in 2001, the BBC persuaded Uefa to delay kick-off of a Champions League tie between Liverpool and Barcelona so viewers could first find out who shot Phil Mitchell. By 2020, EastEnders was being bumped from its slot in the schedules for an FA Cup fifth-round tie between Liverpool and Chelsea. As the big television soaps have declined, it is football that has become the great national obsession, not just in terms of what happens on the pitch but also the endless politicking off it.
Nothing could exemplify that better than Sunday’s game at Selhurst Park, a curiously patchy and unsatisfactory draw played out in an atmosphere of fraught tetchiness. Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest are two very respectable clubs with fine traditions, but there is no great history between them.
