September to May

On Saturday last week some 5,000,000 Englishmen were playing soccer. Almost 1,000,000 more were watching their favorite professional teams perform. For most of the week, nearly half the population of England, hoping to forecast the results of Saturday's big-league matches, had been nibbling pencils, marking numerals and crosses on little printed slips. Saturday night, three out of four Englishmen were gathered around radios to hear the results of the games. For soccer is the most popular sport in England.

Although soccer, more formally known as Association Football, is the progenitor of U. S. football, as a national sport it is more like U. S. baseball. In addition to the millions of English boys and men who play the game for fun, there are several thousand paid players who make up the 500 major and minor-league professional teams. Comparable to baseball's two major leagues are the four divisions (22 teams each) of England's Football League. Like baseball's pennant winners are the top-ranking teams of each division. Faintly comparable to the World Series are the Football Association Cup* games, which are sandwiched in throughout the eight-month season, come to a grand climax with the Cup Final at mammoth Wembley Stadium the last week in April.

Cap & Muffler. Wags have said: "In England everything stops for tea." And contemporary wags have added that British workingmen would stop a revolution for a soccer Cup Final. As the soccer season last week reached a point something like the Fourth of July in U. S. baseball, discussions in pubs and clubs rose to a fine pitch of excitement. Although Brentford, a London club, was leading the First Division, with 14 wins and seven draws for a total of 35 points,/- another London club, Arsenal, was widely fancied to end the season on top.

Unlike U. S. baseball, there are no highly-paid prima donnas in soccer. All players receive a standard weekly wage (-L-4 to -L-8), are seldom singled out for acclaim by sportswriters. The team is the thing. Arsenal, the most famed team in England, draws the largest crowds, makes the most money and gets the biggest headlines. Its director and part owner, paunchy, jowled George Allison, brought to British soccer in 1933 the flair for publicity he learned during 22 years as a London journalist for William Randolph Hearst. Into his new million-dollar stadium, Director Allison, a onetime Yorkshire soccer player, has plowed back some of Arsenal's million-dollar-a-year income. Some tony innovations: a Club Enclosure (special section for 150 $50-a-year members who come in bowlers and tweeds), "lifts" in the grandstands, five bars, a ladies' tea room. But in spite of Director Allison's attempt to elevate the sport above the "cap & muffler" crowd, soccer is still, for the most part, the game of the working classes. England's upper crust still prefers cricket and rugby.

Pools of Pounds. In addition to being England's No. 1 pastime from September to May, soccer in the past four years has created a new industry--one of the biggest in the country. Last year -L-40,000,000 ($200,000,000) changed hands in British football (soccer) pools--a weekly win, lose or draw forecast of the big-league matches. Started just after the War and nurtured by Depression and the dole, football pools, aided by well-advertised slogans like "You can make a fortune for a penny," have grown each year until today it is reckoned that pool coupons go to three out of every four people in England. By last week this parasitic phenomenon had caused so much alarm that Parliament was getting ready to do something about it.

What alarmed Parliament were such statistics as these, widely circulated in the British press: From 1934 to 1937 the turnover from football pools rose from -L-10,000,000 to -L-40,000,000. Mathematical odds against the correct forecast (first prize) are estimated as high as 14,000,000-to-1. Still, there is always that lucky penny that won -L-19,000, the sixpence that brought -L-30,780. A pool promoter's net profit may run up to -L-2,000,000 a season.

When a person wants to bet in a pool he writes the promoter for the week's selection. He usually has a choice of six or seven different combinations, may bet anything from a penny to a pound. There are three cardinal requisites for an "investor" (the word bettor is shunned): He or she must be over 21, must not "invest" with cash, must never visit the promoter's premises. To circumvent England's Betting & Lotteries Act, all transactions are on credit, cash is sent the following week. If an investor fails to follow up with cash, he is promptly put on the Confidential Black List which all promoters keep in common. One establishment, Littlewood's of Liverpool, has received so many pennies and pounds that it has grown from a backroom office to four huge buildings with 5,000 employes.

*F. A. Cup games, open to professionals and amateurs alike, have no bearing on league standings.

/-Division standings are computed in points: wins count two points, draws count one, losses nothing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.