If I’m ever asked whether I’m into football, depending what mood I’m in, I sometimes reply: “No. I support Bristol City and England.” 

Poets are rarely associated with football. I’d imagine the Venn diagram intersection of poetry loving footballers and passionate footballing poets is not large. There are though poems to be found about the sport. You can find a few online.

A 2010 article on The Poetry Foundation, includes Simon Armitage’s ‘Goalkeeper with Cigarette’ which does a good job in portraying the defiant insouciance of the keeper. The crazy drummer of the football team’s band.  

A. E. Houseman, includes a particularly plodding number in The Shropshire Lad, called ‘Twice a week, the winter through’ which mentions football, but I don’t find it especially inspiring. Carol Ann Duffy wrote, The Christmas Truce, about the famous WWI Christmas Day game between German and British troops, in 1914.

Michael Horovitz’s epic ‘The Wolverhampton Wanderer’ covers a lot of cultural and historical territory amongst the football.

More recently, Matthew Stewart produced a pamphlet called ‘Starting Eleven’ with poems about 1980s Aldershot Players. There’s a lovely, elegiac quality to these tales of lower-league strivers and local heroes. 

If anyone knows of particularly good or bad examples, do let me know in the comments below. 

As far as I can remember, I’ve only written one poem about football: The missed bliss of Junior Bent. Junior Bent, played over 200 times for Bristol City in the 1990s. He was fast, energetic and with dribbling skills that could bring fans to their feet. Sadly, all too often the end result didn’t live up to the promise.

The poem was first published in Flights 15 

The missed bliss of Junior Bent

Junior Bent was an endless riff of Bristol City
player. A stirring jangle of intention, as he sped
off up the wing: electrical in racing red, accelerating
the length of Ashton Gate – desperate to achieve
the crescendo of a goal, but to his regular consternation
and us fans, the finishing was off. He’d jitter, trip,
bundling a shot, or cross. Striving for the stars,
slipping in the mud. Junior’s pain and ours united,
when a crowd of eyes rose to trace the flight
of ball, as it skied above the bar. We’d sigh,
throw up arms, tip plastic seats back down. Scowling
at his judas boots, he’d curse the cruelty of a viscous pitch,
turn away from the deepest desolation of the away end:
where Port Vale fans were permanently jeering.

In the light of England’s latest tournament endeavours, I sense perhaps the above poem could work as a synecdoche for the national team.

Which leads me, away from specific poems, to perhaps a shared sensibility between football fandom and poetry. One area where the two pursuits share a large degree of overlap, is in disappointment. 

This is a feeling most poets experience multiple times. All those rejections, shortlistings, but ‘not quite right for us at this time’ responses, ought to help build-up some level of resilience. So, when the rarer acceptances are forthcoming, they ought to feel truly joyous. Although, it never seems to work exactly like that. 

For poets at least, there’s always another submission opportunity or window opening somewhere. When it comes to international footballers, and more especially their fans, there’s a lengthy four-year wait between World Cups. 

In this 2026 edition of The World Cup, England managed once again to do that thing they do.

Playing just well enough to kindle a little flame of hope, even in the most jaded of supporters. And then, snuffing it out, brutally and decisively the moment glory briefly peeped over the horizon.

Against Argentina, in what began as a fractious, niggling encounter, England flickered into life at the beginning of the second-half and scored. Then, almost instantly, seemed to shrink. As if the team experienced a collective feeling of: ‘Oh Fuck. We might actually win. What then?’ 

By the end, I must grudgingly admit, Argentina, Messi et al, deserved their victory. Unlike some pundits and social media blowhards, I don’t doubt the England players’ desire, or heart. At the very highest level, wanting it, if unaccompanied by discipline and skill is never enough. 

Hard though it may be to accept for us, in England’s often insular football culture; the truth is, all supporters and all players in every country are at times beset with disappointment. England are simply more consistent and varied in the manner of its delivery. 

My girlfriend, whose Mother is French, supports France. Recently I suggested to her that it must be a joy to support France, safe in the knowledge that in most matches, they’ll dispatch opponents with imperious skill and efficiency. She told me that it isn’t like that. 

Or in slightly more withering words to that effect. A couple of days later, Spain demonstrated that even for Mbappé & co; in football, as with poetry, nothing is ever certain. 

As long as there is football, there will be winners and losers. But I wish people would go a little bit easier on those who aren’t victorious. 

Post school, which made football feel like torture, I used to play a bit myself, with colleagues after work at various companies. Never blessed with any skill, speed and determination were my limited assets in defence. Once, after a particularly heavy, mistimed tackle, I offered apologies and said: ‘It wasn’t deliberate’, only for my opponent to remark. ‘No. Nothing you do on the pitch ever is.’ That still stings, years later, so my sympathy is with famous footballers who must suffer torrents of abuse online and elsewhere whenever they apparently let the fans down. There’s certainly no poetry in that.