Glasgow’s finest drama

A happening of more parochial interest takes place at Ibrox on Saturday. Goldblatt, though, stresses that Rangers v Celtic is one of the "world's great derbies".

He said: "Human beings in the modern world are hungry for meaning, hungry for ritual and hungry for drama and the illusion of perfection.

"Humans like epics, they like drama and sport, particularly football, delivers all of these things in spades."

In his The Ball is Round, Goldblatt takes 900 pages to expound on the game, its history and its significance. Boring? This book is so invigorating it makes an Old Firm match played amid a bombing raid seem slightly dull.

He has convincing answers to the perennial questions. So why has the Old Firm derby become such a huge match? "Glasgow is the home of modern football," Goldblatt said. "In the same way that the invention of modern art is focused on a couple of key cities, of which Paris is the most important, Glasgow at the turn of 20th century had that same position as regards football.

"Football was the game of the early 20th-century industrial working-class. It isn't any more and it wasn't before that. But in football's moment of formation, Glasgow evoked that working-class milieu.

"Many of the innovations concerning tactics, crowd behaviour, policing, the formation of brake clubs to encourage travelling supporters etc . . . all these things happened first in Glasgow.

"Glasgow had the first football riot, the first football disaster and a whole lot of other things were started there that filtered out through English football through emigre fans and then all over the world.

"So the derby in Glasgow is always going to be super-charged. But then you layer on to that the factor that Glasgow has a level, certainly in the past, of ethnic/religious conflict. It is the only big industrial city in Britain where social divisions are so fantastically sharp.

"Put those things together, and add Glasgow's capacity for story-telling and legend, and you have a super derby that is known all over the world."

Why did football inherit this need to express division? "It's a slightly historical accident," said Goldblatt at his home in Bristol. "In the era when sports went global it was the British Empire that had the most influence. If this had happened 100 years later, we would all have been playing baseball."

He believes, though, that football has certain aspects that make it irresistible. "It is about chaos and uncertainty and the the worst team can sometimes win. Football delivers on that kind of unpredictable story," he said. He knows, though, that the sport owes much to its supporters.

"Half the pleasure of football is the wonder of its crowds." he added. "Basketball, for example, can only accommodate 25,000 live spectators. Golf has crowds fragmented, wandering around. Football does 100,000 plus. That's a big difference."

But what does football do for the fans?

"The fans' identity is made through ritual and collective acts," Goldblatt says. "Football is an extraordinary, special collective act that takes you out of the grim, greyness of everyday life. This fusion happened in a time when there was a lot less distractions and alternatives."

He said that when football exploded on the world at the turn of the 20th century "one didn't seek one's identity through fashion or pop".

The growth of trade unions offered the working-man an outlet for his will to improve his lot and form a vision. "But what would you rather do: go to a union meeting or a football match?" asked Goldblatt. "When it comes to creating solidarity, football dramatises it in a way that it is unbeatable."

That solidarity was the product of a working-class approach to the game that was emblematic of the early 20th century. The early 21st century shows how far football has moved from these roots.

"Global finances are reproduced in the world of football. Power and money will be concentrated in fewer hands and in larger corporations. That process has been under way in football for the past 10 years," he said.

He visited a South African township last week and saw Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal shirts on the impoverished children. This, he said, was powerful testimony to the "the global reach of the few".

Satellite football and the big contracts it spawns have made these rich clubs richer. The Champions League has entrenched that position of power among a self-perpetuating few, argues Goldblatt.

Are the Old Firm in danger of being left behind? Is tomorrow's derby merely a raging at the dying of the light of a city that was the crucible of the game's development?

"Scotland is between the centre and the periphery of all this. It is a tricky situation to what extent Scottish football can sustain its competitiveness," reckons Goldblatt.

Competitiveness, he knows, will not be a problem on the field tomorrow.

• The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football by David Goldblatt is published by Penguin at £15.

Goldblatt's gems
Penarol v Nacional (Uruguay)
It has been going for more than 100 years. This clash dramatises class and ethnicity in a very interesting way. It has lost some of its edge because Uruguayan football has become something of a miserable, melancholy backwater. It's peak has probably past but it still fascinates.

Zamalek v Ahly (Egypt)
This one goes back to the 1930s and it involves a fight about the meaning of Egyptian secular politics. They get 110,000 at these games. It may not be of the highest class in pure football but it ranks high in the antipathy.

Olympiakos v Panathinaikos (Greece)
In terms of meanness and nastiness, this takes some beating. It has links to the Old Firm derby. Panathinaikos fans have taken to wearing Celtic shirts and Olympiakos wear the Rangers shirt. Panathinaikos have the shamrock, too, of course.

Barcelona v Real Madrid (Spain)
It is not a city derby, of course. But Latino cultures go for hyperbole so it is a super clasico. It is probably the most technically accomplished derby, given the invariable class of the participants. Also included a pig's head when Luis Figo returned to Barca with Real.

Boca v River Plate (Argentina)
A nasty encounter this one. The two clubs both have origins in the poor riverside area of Buenos Aires known as La Boca. River moved upmarket to the more affluent district of Nunez in the north of the city in 1923. Since then Boca Juniors have been known as the club of the working class.