Thank God for Football!: The Illustrated Companion: 1

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Wirral-based band She Drew The Gun won it in 2016 and the group’s lead singer Louisa Roach tells The Athletic it was like claiming silverware on the football field.

If we want to win the World Cup, we need to get more young people playing football on the streets, then playing football on the pitch, then playing football up the levels,” he said. “And the only way of doing that is actually working with communities because they have a great organising power. He didn’t turn up because I got drunk and lost my purse so we were up at lost property,” Nic laughs.

It has given me this. This is the forefront of my focus but I will never take for granted what the Liverpool fans have given me. They have put me here. I have worked like a dog for 12 years, it hasn’t been an overnight thing. I have been on the terraces making friends and that is why these people supported me so much when I started out — because I am one of them.” Few people are aware that, of the 41 clubs that have played in the FA Premier League since its inception in the 1992-3 season, 12 can trace their origin directly to a church. However, many of these 12 famous football clubs know little about their origins or founders. The market researcher was born in 1991 in Rotherham and is wearing an Inter Milan away shirt his father bought the year he was born. The book’s title is based on the following quotation from Lord Arthur Kinnaird, who played in nine FA Cup Finals between 1873 and 1883 – as well as being a leading Christian statesman of his era. “I believe that all right-minded people have good reason to thank God for the great progress of this popular national game”. Many of us regularly and sincerely thank God for football.

The game petered out due to the demands of organisation. But bonds and memories were made. Lifelong friendships. Yet not everyone feels football and Glastonbury are aligned. This week I attended the launch of Peter Lupson’s new book* on the Christian origins of football clubs at Liverpool Cathedral. These verses seem relevant. Football clearly has a place at Glastonbury, but is it just a cosmetic collision or are there deeper connections? The Athletic navigated the World Cup final of music festivals and spoke to fans, artists and revellers to find out.

Another reminder comes at the side of the Pyramid Stage. The Workers Charter Bar are doing their bit for girls and women who play football in Nicaragua. The bar staff, who all wear bright orange Sondico bibs from previous charity tournaments, work for free with their wages donated to Bristol Link with Nicaragua. Williams, a referee and former coach, said: “It’s about making sure people all around the country and of all faiths and denominations feel welcome in football.” How could the members of the Young Men's Bible Class who decided to found the Aston Villa (Wesleyan) Football team or the boys of the All Hallows Church Bible class who founded the Hotspur Football Club, for example, possible have guessed that two of England's finest clubs, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur who emerge in later years? As Diana Ross — famed for missing that penalty at the 1994 World Cup opening ceremony — belts out her last song, Chain Reaction, before the sun sets on the first Glastonbury for three years, the links could not be clearer. The flags, this shirts, the songs, the celebrities, the lyrics and the lives. They are all on show when Glastonbury and football dance together. They get a safe space,” Alix Hughes, board member of the charity, says. “It is a youth club after school. They get support with their education and with football. The girls get training and coaching from age eight to 18. It gives them safety and a peer group of women supporting each other. It builds their confidence.”