So, where does all this leave us? In recent years the way that we watch, play and think about the game has evolved at quite some speed. Much of that evolution has undoubtedly been for the better. As has already been noted, more people around the world play football than ever and interest in the sport has never been greater. Some may yearn for the days when football was different, with the more combative tackling, the absence of play-acting on the field, the mudbaths that passed as pitches, the anarchic feel of the terraces and such like. Yet even those wearing the most rose-tinted of spectacles may well admit that the all-round quality of the product on offer has never been better.

Football's evolution has, of course, been accompanied by significant side-effects: the haves have more than they have ever had before, the have-nots continue to struggle to make ends meet. As Matt Andrews and Peter Harrington note in their detailed analysis of football's financial ecosystem: “the thousands of clubs beyond the elite have very little resources, constituting a vast base of ‘have-nots’ in football's financial pyramid”. The way that Premier League clubs look after those teams who are periodically relegated into the Championship is a fascinating example. In 2018–19, Huddersfield Town came bottom of the Premier League, winning just three of their 38 league games. They only managed 16 points all season, the third lowest ever in the Premier League era. The Terriers had had an abysmal campaign. Yet in the three years that followed their relegation, Huddersfield were given an estimated L92 million in parachute payments – money that's paid by the Premier League “in solidarity” with relegated clubs. In 2022–23 Southampton won only six games and were relegated; if they had stayed in the Championship for the three years that followed (they have since been promoted back to the Premier League), then the Saints would have received in excess of L100 million from the Premier League (despite not even being in it). These payments are paid to clubs to help them cope with the reduced revenues in the Championship. That really is quite some “solidarity”.

If looking at the role of the referee sheds light on many of football's challenges, then the logical next step is look at those who actually play the game: the players. As explained at the end of Chapter 3, getting integrity right involves a mixture of things. Players should “do the right thing” not simply through coercion but also because these are the right things to be doing anyway. Values matter every bit as much as rules, regulations and punishments. Footballers are imperfect beings; they make mistakes and misjudgements. They can read situations incorrectly and do things that, after some reflection, they might regret. All of that is understandable. The challenge is to get players (and others) to be aware that what they do matters beyond the immediate contest that they are involved in. Indeed, showing personal integrity is about plenty more than individual behaviour; it's about having a guiding set of principles that use traits such as honesty, trustworthiness and fairness as guides to help shape action. It's also about understanding the wider context and maintaining the institutional integrity of football itself.

This is even more so given that football is a fast-paced sport where multiple potentially key decisions are made at speed. In a tight game one slip, one mistake, one ill-fated decision can turn a game on its head. There are, in other words, many potentially key moments that players have to negotiate. In doing so they have to rely as much on instinct as calculation. It's for that very reason that morals, values and principles matter so much.

Paolo Di Canio: a riddle wrapped in a mystery disguised as an enigma

Paolo Di Canio is not the first player that would spring to mind when discussing issues of doing the right thing and acting appropriately. For starters, Di Canio, the talismanic Italian centre-forward, was a man with unapologetically neo-fascist political leanings. As a Lazio player it was he who used an outstretched right-arm salute to celebrate a 3-1 victory over city rivals Roma in 2005. It was he who had the letters DVX, a Latin derivation of “Il Duce”, the nickname given to former Italian leader Benito Mussolini, tattooed on his right arm. To that was added a portrait of Mussolini on Di Canio's back.

For the first 25 years of my academic career, I worked assiduously to make sure that I didn't mix work and pleasure. In terms of work that meant thinking predominantly about left-wing politics, the post-1989 transformation of eastern Germany and more recently (anti-)corruption. I taught classes on all of the above. For good measure, I found it all fascinating.

The one thing I consciously didn't write about was sport. Playing, watching and thinking about that remained something for the weekend and, as my long-suffering wife would no doubt testify, very often for weekday evenings, too. The edifice began crumbling in 2010. On 2 December FIFA awarded Qatar the right to host the 2022 Men's World Cup. Separating work (specifically corruption analysis) and sport (specifically football's showcase event) was becoming ever more difficult. That led to a number of blog posts (mostly on the website of the Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC) at the University of Sussex) and a range of other contributions to public debate on corruption problems in football (and indeed sport more broadly).

A chat with Agenda's Alison Howson then brought the barrier down completely. Football did indeed face corruption challenges, but they weren't the only problems that those playing, watching, analysing and indeed governing the game needed to think about. There is already a plethora of football books on many of those problems. Football's hooligan challenges, for example, have been given plenty of coverage, as has the business of football. There's more and more analysis on the changing role of women and girls in the game, on the systems and tactics that coaches now adopt and on the place of football in modern capitalism. Plus, there is the apparently never-ending production line of biographies and autobiographies. The market in football books is not small.

Yet one issue was hardly ever thematized: integrity. Given that one of the first sentences I mentioned to Alison in that initial discussion was that “football has an integrity problem” it seemed rather odd that there weren't book-length analyses of what that problem might be and how those involved in the game might go about trying to solve it.

On 3 May 1986 Shrewsbury Town played Middlesbrough. It was the final weekend of the 1985–86 season in the second tier of English football (what is now the EFL's Championship). Neither Shrewsbury nor Middlesbrough had had particularly auspicious campaigns. Come the first Saturday in May both were fighting against relegation.

They met at Shrewsbury's picturesque Gay Meadow ground situated on the banks of Britain's longest river, the Severn. Big willow trees overlooked the Riverside terrace to the west, the quaint Abbey Gardens were nestled next to the Wakeman School to the south. Trains rumbled behind the main grandstand to the east and passengers travelling towards South Wales or in the direction of the mid-Wales coast could catch glimpses of some of the action as the trains trundled by. A more ambient setting for professional football in England it would have been hard to find.

An outsider looking at the events in the stadium, however, would not have used the word ambient to describe them. The atmosphere in the ground was tense. Shrewsbury Town knew that they’d maintain their status in the second division with a win or, unless truly amazing results went against them elsewhere, a draw. Middlesbrough needed all three points. Indeed, if they were to get those three points then it would be their opponents on that day that would go through the relegation trap door.

Sixteen minutes in and Shrewsbury's centre-forward, Colin Robinson, put the home side in front. The mood in the Station End, where the massed ranks of Middlesbrough supporters were standing, darkened. Fans were soon climbing the 8ft high fences that were keeping them in and threatening to get onto the pitch. As half-time neared police tried to restore order. Their efforts did little to calm things down, and it was not long before supporters were pulling staff working in the café at the back of the terrace out through the café's window at the front so that they could ransack the place. Others working in the café fled, dodging punches along the way as they tried to get off the terrace and to the sanctuary of waiting police lines.

One chilly February afternoon in 2023 I went down to the local park to play football with my two then seven-year-olds. We weren't alone. A group of a dozen or so kids of more or less the same age were also there. They, my boys included, were all going to be put through their footballing paces by a friend of mine, Mike. Mike was a good non-league footballer in his day, and he also had many years behind him as a PE teacher. He therefore had that priceless combination of knowing what he was talking about in terms of coaching and knowing how to get seven-yearolds to actually listen to him.

At the end of the session, one of the other parents, Toby, sidled up to me. He looked up from his phone, paused, and then asked me if I fancied doing a bit of refereeing. Could I run the rule over a pretty low-key charity game that was taking place later that day? The referee that they had lined up had just pulled out and they needed someone to step in. I’d be paid L50, and everyone would really appreciate it.

My gut instinct was positive. Years previously I’d done a referees’ course and I’d played (and watched) football for decades. I’d nonetheless only sporadically done any actual refereeing, and my last outing was a fiercely contested local derby between, well, FC Bracknell U7 Blues and Ascot United U7 Royals (when the designated referee had dropped out shortly before kick-off). For a referee, there are undoubtedly more challenging fixtures out there.

Stepping in to officiate a charity game sounded doable. This wasn't a game where league points (or passage into the next round of a competition) were at stake. If I were to refuse, then the other option was a quiet Sunday evening at home watching (once the kids were in bed) the NFL. Deep down I also felt that I wouldn't be a bad referee. I said “yes”. Cue the hunt for a whistle, a decent watch and other bits of paraphernalia.

On the face of it, defining what “integrity” means doesn't appear to be that difficult. Most people have a basic idea of what acting with integrity entails. It is about individuals making good decisions. It is about embracing (and acting upon) strong moral and ethical principles. It's about incorporating values such as honesty and truthfulness and being consistent in behaving in accordance with these values. Integrity, in other words, concerns the process of coaxing and cajoling people into taking the right decisions at exactly the time when they can theoretically take the wrong ones.

So far so straightforward. Yet quite quickly waters can be muddied. It is not always clear, for example, what “right” and “wrong” actually mean when talking about decisions made. Is blatantly diving to win a penalty in a game “right” in that it gifts your team a chance to score a goal? Or is it “wrong” in that you’re engineering something (a penalty) that shouldn't be there (as you weren't touched by your opponent and deceived the referee)? Or would such an occurrence be both right and wrong depending on who you are and which perspective you’re coming at this from? Getting integrity right can quickly become tricky.

Finding a way through what can become a philosophical minefield is not made any easier by looking at the way that sporting organizations talk about integrity. Integrity is an idea that can very easily be sloganized. Warm words centring around broad principles are certainly plentiful. Indeed, it would appear that everyone is in favour of acting with integrity. In that sense it's a classic valence issue – the goal is seemingly a common one and everyone agrees with it, just as they would with the aim of lowering unemployment, reducing crime levels and improving educational outcomes. The only question centres around the methods and approaches you choose in trying to get there.

Closer inspection of how football (and indeed sport more broadly) works in practice soon throws up some interesting ambiguities there. Unsurprisingly no organization argues that integrity is a bad thing or that their particular sporting world would be better off with less of it about. Yet, if that's turned around and we ask what behaving with integrity actually looks like then responses can be both wide and varied, narrow and specific, often confusing and at times just plain contradictory.

Margaret Pedder knew what she was talking about. Born in 1911 in an Everton-supporting family in Bootle, she was well aware of how football worked and indeed the hold that it had on many people. No great fan herself, she had nonetheless got used to seeing her husband, Jim, regularly disappearing off to stand on the Gwladys Street End at Everton's Goodison Park. Jim worked on the docks, and watching football was one of the ways he found to switch off from the challenges that everyday life posed. He was an Everton regular. Indeed, by the late 1960s, Jim was also taking Pete, his daughter Grace's soon-to-be-husband, along with him.

Once married, the journeys that Margaret's son-in-law took to watch the blue side of Merseyside play became fewer and farther between. He began looking to pastures new for employment, ultimately finding work as a fitter with an engineering firm in Shropshire. In 1970 the newlyweds subsequently moved to the tranquil town of Shrewsbury to start a new life. They settled in nicely and by the late 1970s Margaret had also upped sticks to join them. Pete, meanwhile, had inevitably started to watch the local football team. Talking about the ups and down of the local side became one way that new members of the community came to belong. Going to watch – and talk about – the football forms some of the social glue that helps communities large and small stick together. The highs are celebrated, the lows are worked through. The one continuity was that local football clubs up and down the land were, for many, one of the more important constants in life.

The visits to watch Shrewsbury Town FC became regular events. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight there would never be a better time to watch them play; Manchester City, for example, were dumped out of the FA Cup on a cold, snowy day in January 1979, and that year Shrewsbury carried on all the way to the quarter finals, the furthest that they’d ever been in the competition. By May 1979 the third division (currently League One) title had also been won.

As and when people find out that you live in Ascot, it's rarely long before the topic of horses comes up. Why? Because for one week every year Ascot becomes the centre of the horse racing world. The fact that the late Queen Elizabeth II famously enjoyed attending each of Royal Ascot's five days helped establish the “Royal Meeting” as a key part of London's “social season” (alongside the Henley regatta, the Wimbledon tennis championships and an array of regal garden parties). For one week in June every year around 300,000 people flock to the small Berkshire town to watch the very best thoroughbreds race around the 179 acres of Ascot racecourse. The horses, however, are just the one part of it. In 2023 around 400 helicopters and over 1,000 limousines ferried participants to the course, 56,000 bottles of champagne were sold, 5,000 kilos of salmon were eaten, 21,000 jugs of Pimm's were poured and around 250,000 hand-crafted afternoon teas were prepared. And around 6,500 temporary staff were employed to make sure it ran smoothly. If you live in Ascot, Royal Ascot is a big deal.

That, however, is just one week a year. Race meetings do take place at other times, but nothing comes close to the hullaballoo of Royal Ascot. In recent years another activity that takes place on land belonging to the racecourse has risen in prominence: football. Ascot United Football Club, established in 1961, has become one of the biggest football clubs (in terms of playing members) in the country. In 2023–24 the Yellas put out a mightily impressive 95 sides. U5s and U6s start out in the “Ascot Academy” before moving into more organized football once they get to Year 2 at school. There are boys’ teams and girls’ teams (and in the youngest aged groups mixed teams). The women's senior side plays in the Southern Football League while the men's senior sides play in the Isthmian League (South Central Division). Indeed, in May 2023 the men's senior side even made it all the way to Wembley, ultimately lifting the FA Vase in front of 5,000 of their own cheering supporters. The club even puts out two veterans’ (over 40) teams and a “supervets” (over 50) side.

Although you might agree wholeheartedly with the arguments and ideas I have presented so far, the international dimension of the climate crisis is likely to induce despondency. Each region on our planet contributes a share to total GHGs, but their repercussions for the climate are global, not regional. For instance, Europe is responsible for less than 10 per cent of worldwide emissions; thus, even if this region were to achieve net zero tomorrow, it would not resolve the climate crisis. The combined emissions produced by China, India and Russia represent around 40 per cent of total world emissions, 75 per cent of which come from China (see IEA 2021). We need to consider the climate strategies of these three nations, from the perspective of contemporary global geopolitics. In the absence of collaboration among and commitment to climate goals by these major economies, is there a chance that we will achieve net zero?

The difficulty involved in securing international agreement on emissions reductions can be illustrated using the famous “prisoner's dilemma”. This is a thought experiment, in which two people are accused of a crime. Since there is insufficient evidence to charge one or the other, the police present them with a deal: if neither confesses to the crime, both will receive a short prison term; if only one confesses and betrays the other, the betrayer will go free and the other prisoner will receive a very long sentence; if both accuse one another, they will both receive a long prison sentence. The prisoners are isolated but must make their decision simultaneously. Each prisoner's dilemma is between betraying or not. If one thinks the other will confess and betray, the best response is to confess and accuse the other as well to avoid being the only one accused and having to serve a very long sentence. But even if one thinks the other will cooperate and not confess, the best strategy is to confess (betray the other), as the betrayer will go free.

At the beginning of 2024, farmers across Europe began protesting against new policies and proposals to reduce the tax allowances they receive for diesel, the levels of nitrogen oxide and methane they are allowed to produce, and against the rising costs of fertilizer and other bureaucratic barriers to their businesses. Despite agriculture accounting for approximately 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, on the face of it, the individual European farmer's contribution is limited. While the farmers’ protests have brought significant attention to the economic pressures faced by the agricultural sector, they have also highlighted the complex challenge of balancing environmental policy goals with the economic sustainability of farming in the EU. The European Commission and national governments have been tasked with addressing these challenges in a manner that ensures the just transition towards more environmentally friendly agricultural practices without compromising the financial stability of those who work the land . However, the mishandling of farming policies has led to protests and blockades, supported by political groups such as the Dutch Farmers’ Party, and a risk of escalation to a full-scale green backlash.

In other sectors, European climate policies have been integrated progressively, as is the case for the electricity industry under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS). The EU-ETS has effectively reduced emissions by setting a cap on the total amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted by installations covered by the system. The cap is reduced over time, so that total emissions fall. The gradual reduction has incentivized the electricity sector to invest in sustainable practices and technologies, in line with a smooth transition towards a low-carbon economy. This gradual approach aligns with environmental goals without sacrificing sectoral competitiveness. By providing a clear and predictable regulatory framework, the EU-ETS has enabled power companies to plan and invest accordingly. Investments in renewable energy sources and improvements in energy efficiency across Europe have been supported by these clear, long-term signals.

Governments wield significant power, particularly through their fiscal strategies and regulatory mandates, to achieve their emissions targets and combat the threats posed by climate change. This chapter begins by examining the fiscal tools available to policymakers in supporting the green shift. These tools range from emissions taxes to incentivizing investment in clean sectors such as renewable energy, and improving energy efficiency, and exemplified by inducements to upgrade the energy efficiency of buildings. Governments, also, can make direct public investments in providing sustainable transportation and enforcing regulations to reduce pollution. We investigate the ideal mix of these fiscal tools to not only steer the economy towards net zero but also to respect fiscal prudence (to avoid overburdening the state's finances). This balance is vital, as the growing climate crisis and the rising costs of climate adaptation and mitigation put a strain on public coffers. We shall also discuss the latest governmental initiatives aimed at reducing GHG emissions and closing the gap between pledges and real actions.

We shall continue by interrogating the pivotal role of financial markets. The green transition is an ambitious venture that will require colossal investment and will require much more than government funding alone. The private sector will have to act. Despite a recent noticeable uptick in climate-focused private investment, much more finance will be needed. Public policy has a crucial role in ramping up the appeal of green investments and attracting potential funders and backers. As in the case of carbon pricing – assigning a cost to pollution to level the playing field for the more expensive eco-friendly emitting activities – only government incentives to make investment in renewables more attractive for low-emitting sectors can kickstart entire new industries. At the same time, financial regulators are nudging industry to evaluate how climate change – from policy shifts to natural disasters – might affect their financial stakes. Recognition of these risks is making financing for high-emission activities, and for activities vulnerable to climate impacts, more expensive, which is favouring activities that are both low-emissions producing and resilient to the physical threats of climate change.

The alarming rise in emissions and the challenges faced by countries in trying to curb them begs the question: What is holding governments back? Are the political and economic impediments to a zero-emissions future so great that any attempts to reach it are futile? In this chapter, I tackle a key question related to the transition to a greener economy, namely, does it make economic sense? Will there be gains for economic growth and job opportunities or are we merely staring down the barrel of huge financial costs and, potentially, compromising current living standards for a cleaner environment?

To begin with, I want to dispel a commonly held belief that reducing our carbon footprint inevitably requires a decline in our economic activities – an idea that has been described as “degrowth theory”. In order to challenge the idea of degrowth, I explain the medium- to long-term concrete and substantial economic benefits we stand to gain from transitioning to an emissions-free future. However, it is necessary to acknowledge that the path towards a sustainable future is fraught with significant challenges. In this chapter, I explore the most salient obstacles, and I shall discuss strategies to overcome them in the following chapters.

Is degrowth the solution?

A pressing concern for many is the sustainability of the existing capitalist system, which describes an economy characterized by the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Individuals and companies own businesses and property, and the main goal of companies is to generate profits. Market forces, primarily supply and demand, determine the prices of goods and services, fostering a competitive environment in which businesses compete for customers. This competition is believed to drive innovation and efficiency. The role of governments in this system typically is limited and focuses mainly on enforcing contracts and property rights, with the idea that it is the market that is the primary regulator of economic activity.

Measuring emissions is difficult. At present, only large companies, especially those subject to emission trading systems – such as the European Emission Trading System (EU ETS) – have protocols for measuring them. Most smaller companies do not measure them. Just as we use estimates, not direct measurements, for emissions from transport, housing, agriculture, and so on.

The practice currently divides emissions into three categories:

Scope 1: those produced directly by a production process;

Scope 2: those related to the energy used by the same production process;

Scope 3: all other emissions related to intermediate inputs, their transport, the transport of goods produced by the production process in question and their use.

For example, for a plant producing plastic parts, Scope 1 emissions are those related to the production process of the plastic parts, Scope 2 emissions are those related to the production of the energy purchased and used in the plant, and Scope 3 emissions are those necessary to produce the intermediate inputs to the production process, as well as for transport upstream and downstream of that process. There is a risk of counting Scope 3 emissions twice, once in the plant that produces them directly and once in the plant that uses that product as an intermediate input.

In the taxonomy of emissions, there are also so-called Scope 4 emissions, i.e. “avoided emissions”. Companies may develop new products or processes that produce fewer emissions than their predecessors throughout the production chain but may be reluctant to do so if the new product still leads to emissions. Hence the need to assess whether the new product or process leads to a reduction in emissions, compared to the status quo, throughout the value chain. It is important that “avoided emissions” are recognized and evaluated, so that companies have the right incentives to introduce innovations that in net terms lead to a reduction in emissions.

The possibility of increasing emissions now to diminish them later is also an issue worth considering. Initiatives such as constructing solar and wind energy facilities, bolstering electric grids, or advancing battery production may indeed intensify emissions and investment needs briefly.