Manchester City’s recent signing, Sergio Augero, made an unusual claim in his first Premier League interview.  He called himself “the Che Guevara of modern soccer.” The striker was reflecting on his skills on the pitch, not an ambition to gather a paramilitary band of League Two bench-warmers to wage the people’s war on Mr. Cameron and his hopey-changey sidekick.  That’s probably a wise choice from a strictly tactical standpoint.  Augero recently denied making the comments to the Sun, anyway. Given the state of British journalism, the denial sounds reasonable, but it did get me thinking about how apolitical sport in the neoliberal age has become.  What else could Augero have possibly meant? Barney Ronay beat me to the punch in a 2007 piece:

Historically, football’s politics, such as they are, have tended to loiter on the left wing. The majority of Premiership clubs have their roots in either a local church or a local pub. For 100 years these clubs existed as an extension of their local community, a living riposte – albeit an occasionally violent and shambolically administered one — to the Thatcherite notion that there is no such thing as society.

The EPL, in particular, use to play host to charismatic socialists like Brain Clough, a militant in the anti-fascist movement, supporter of the miners’ strike, and author of Jacobin-approved pronouncements like, “For me, socialism comes from the heart. I don’t see why certain sections of the community should have the franchise on champagne and big houses.”