“Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil this game: the heavy financial interests, the absurd transfer and player-selling system, the lack of any birth or residential qualification for the players, the betting and coupon competitions, the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the Press, the monstrous partisanship of the crowds; but the fact remains that it is not yet spoilt, and it has gone out and conquered the world.”

– English writer JB Priestley on the state of football . . . in 1933. Truly, some things never change.