It's not every day that the soccer tifosi, those hardcore empiricists, come face to face with a well nigh theoretical observation to the effect that 'football matches are iterative,' which might give one to think that the teachings of the late Jacques Derrida, who had a lot to say about, and some cruel conclusions to draw from the iterability of language, had finally penetrated the press-boxes of Highbury and Old Trafford, there to sap the presumptions of the Saturday afternoon lodgers, as they sit at their laptops hurriedly searching for what just could be, you never know, novel ways of describing the familiar happenings they can see developing down below on the grass. But not so, the hacks are safe as yet from infiltration by any boarding party from the deconstructive tendency. The learned nod in the direction of the 'iterative' comes from the preface to a new and rather stylish Football Lexicon (Oleander, £9.95), a dictionary of usage that goes alphabetically on what I remember being called, a propos one or other lexically starved football commentator, a 'jogtrot through the clichés'.

LRB 2 December 2004 | PDF Download