One place where Britain remains truly a global player is the empire of football
Erling Haaland taps the ball into Tottenham Hotspur's net on Tuesday to edge Manchester City closer to another Premier League title, another triumph that follows an implacable logic. Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty Images
If the British Museum – which I love – represents Victorian Britain’s global footprint, what is the modern equivalent? What institution represents 21st-century Britain, or at least England? It has to be England’s most dynamic cultural export of the past 30 years, the English. It is a global brand, followed and obsessed over by millions across the world, uniting strangers in their devotion to teams that many years ago stopped drawing footballers from their specific hinterland.
Let’s look at the numbers. Football purists – the wet terrace brigade – complain about the relentless commercialism and pre-packaged sterility of the Premier League with its shiny-floor analysis and data-driven obsession, but only 30 years ago, when England’s top-flight teams broke away to form the new league, few predicted the trajectory of what was, up to then, a working man’s sport.
But just in case you thought a football club was a good business to own, it’s not. Most of the money goes to the players, not the owners. Of the £4.6 billion total revenue, the collective Premier League players’ wage bill is a staggering £3.8 billion – with theaccounting for almost half of that. This is why relegation means financial peril for many owners.
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