Women's 2025 Euros are here

It is here! The Women's Euros 2025 kicked off on week ago, on Wednesday 2nd July,  with opening defeats for both holders England and geographic neighbours, Wales.

As usual we made our own predictions, and rolled a dice for the entire tournament. This is how we each think that the Final will play out:

Alex: Germany 2 - 2 Spain, (6-7 penalties)

Kevin: Sweden 2 - 2 Germany (5-4 penalties)

Dice: Wales 0 - 0 Netherlands (0-3 penalties)

Here is how we each predict the GB teams will fare:

Alex: England - Group Stages (finish 3rd, fail to progress) / Wales - Group Stages (finish 4th, fail to progress)

Kevin: England lose in Quarter Final to Germany (2-2 normal play, 4-5 penalties / Wales - Group Stages (finish 4th, fail to progress)

Dice - England - Group Stages (finish 4th, fail to progress) / Wales - Runners Up (see above)

But how will it play out? Will 2022's hosts and champions England 'bring it home' again? Or will Spain who beat England in the final of the 2023 World Cup sustain its dominance? Will a long-shot dark horse team emerge to surprise us  - such as the dice prediction of Wales finishing Runners-Up?

Both England and Wales will play this evening, and we wish both well in their respective games.  They will face each other in a show-down on Sunday 13th July.

Please note that the above predictions are for fun only and are not advice for betting on the outcomes of these or any football games. The authors cannot  accept any liability for the performance or outcomes.

Report: York Festival of Ideas with author Daniel Gray 'The Delights of Football'

On Saturday 7th June 2025 we had the honour of hosting author Daniel Gray at the University of York's Festival of Ideas.

Daniel has been on our radar since 2018, when his book Saturday, 3pm, was recommended. It was therefore a treat to finally meet the author and to share with our audience the opportunity to hear him read.

Daniel read selected passages from three of his books, including several from his more recent 'Delights of Football' series.

Daniel's writing has drawn comparison to the artwork of Lowry, for his ability to find delight in every day life in a way that resonates with his audience.

There was something for everyone in his observations on receiving the fixture list, watching referees fall over, the smell of pies and fried onions in and around the stadium.  He paints pictures with words and even the few people in the audience who weren't fans of football enjoyed the poetic prose.

Sighted in the audience was our guest speaker from last year, Dr Tosh Warwick, who kindly photographed the event.

Photo with thank to Dr Tosh Warwick

The Soccer Mad Boffins series within the York Festival of Ideas continues to draw and sizable, enthusiastic and diverse audience. We thank everyone who attends and to the university and especially the festival organisers, in particular Joan, Naomi and Caren, who have believed in us since we began and without whom these events would not be possible.

A complete list of our Festival of Ideas appearances is included below, with links to Youtube for those which were recorded and still available to watch online. Note that this does not include appearances at other events such as York Researchers Night, at which you may also have met us:

2025 with Daniel Gray 'The Delights of Football' click here to watch

2024 with Dr Tosh Warwick 'Lost Football Grounds' click here to watch

2023 with  Dr Alexander Jackson 'Curating the World's Game: An Audience with the National Football Museum'  click here to watch

2023 with Dr Duncan Stone 'Different Class: The Untold Story of English Cricket' click here to watch

2021 with football Referee Keith Hackett 'Rules of the Game: On and Off the Pitch'

2019 with investigate journalist David Conn 'The Business of Professional Football'

2019 with football agent Daniel Geey 'Done Deal: Premier League Big Business'

2018 with former FA Chairman and Director-General of the BBC Greg Dyke on 'The Business of World Cup Football'

New UK Policy Contribution

We have had published a short report to UK Government's Public Accounts Committee 'Projects: Their Dynamic Ambience'.  The report is concerned with the considerations for project governance in public sector infrastructure/mega projects.

1. We argue there are several reasons why poor decision making and governance can happen within government major projects and programmes.
2. Some factors are unique to government projects e.g. changes in administration whereas others are shared characteristics for all large-scale projects, programmes and portfolios within any sector.
3. Projects operate in a dynamic environment and stakeholders can change over time.  It is well known stakeholders have varied levels of power and interest in projects, but we argue they also have different motives which can cause them to act in various ways.
4. There can be conflicting motives within a government project.  Private sector expertise is often brought in to fill knowledge gaps.  The conflict is that these organisations are expected to maximise shareholder value, whereas this could be seen by the public as profiteering from the public purse.
5. This can cause stakeholders to hide motives.  We believe that this creates a negative ambience within the project and consequently can cause poor decision making and governance. 
6. The power and interest of stakeholders in the project is a key concern to the project commissioning organisation.. As the motives are dynamic so are the power and interest of different stakeholders.  The long length of government programmes mean that stakeholders often change for example turnover of staff or supplier failure.  As stakeholders change, the power and interest of this group can vary.  For the purpose of this paper, we have named this the Dynamic Ambience of Projects (DAP).
7. We actively encourage all potential motives, both imagined and realised, are discussed openly and document in an annually reviewed interest register.  This register should form part of core project governance and be considered as part of the annual review that National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) undertakes on all government major projects, programmes and portfolios.

To read the report in full, please use this link.

York Festival of Ideas 2025: The Delights of Football

 

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• Saturday 7 June 2025, 3.15pm to 4.15pm
• Location: In-person only at Ron Cooke Hub, Campus East, University of York (Map)Admission:
• Free admission, booking required

Book tickets

From sportswashing to ticket prices, we hear much that is critical about modern football - but what remains magic about the game? From the beauty of floodlights to the glorious moment when a referee falls over, Daniel Gray, author of the Delights series of football books and owner of a Bootham Crescent turnstile, lyrically celebrates the simple joys of the beautiful game.

Join in the conversation at an event hosted by York’s Soccer-Mad Boffins Alex Gillett and Kevin Tennent of the University of York.

Daniel Gray is the author of the Delights series of football books, Stramash and Homage to Caledonia. For a short period in the early 1990s he was the finest left-back in his village, once marking Gordon Strachan’s youngest son (the one who didn’t become a footballer) out of the game. A Middlesbrough supporter, Daniel began attending football matches in 1988 and has never recovered. He has worked in a psychiatric hospital, a library and in television and politics.

Soccer-Mad Boffins' Field Trip to Millwall FC

On Saturday 15th March we attended Millwall’s Community Day centred around a Saturday league game against Stoke City, on the invitation of the club's Community Trust Safeguarding and EDI Lead, and Women's Team General Manager Jason Vincent. Various employers and agencies from public and private sector attended with stalls and fundraising, and a community football tournament involving men’s, women’s, boys and girls teams took place in the morning. A safe atmosphere was maintained in and around the stadium with a carnival feel, and at half time a procession took place around the stadium showcasing the club’s women’s and community teams. Some of the employability workers that we spoke to reported a better uptake in engaging with vocational training by involving the club than through the job centre – it was clear that these programmes run jointly with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Greater London Authority were very successful. The Lions triumphed with a last gasp penalty in the 90th minute winning 1-0 after a tense game.

Latest Publication: Explicating archival ethnography: Helmut Käser’s business trip.

We are proud to report our latest published research, which appears in a forthcoming Special Issue on the topic of 'Micro History' in the journal  Management & Organizational History.

Using a scrapbook collated by FIFA football administrator Helmut Kaser, we explore an interesting adventure in his working life and add something on the literature of research methods.

Here is the abstract for the paper, the full article can be found here

Archival ethnography using microhistorical approaches has considerable untapped potential as a research approach in management and business history. We use a scrapbook compiled by the mid-twentieth century football administrator Dr Helmut Käser on a business trip to Northern Ireland and London in 1967 to illustrate the ethnographic potential of the emic perspective for narrating microhistorical cases. The scrapbook demonstrates Käser’s interaction with several contexts which have been understood very separately by historians on his journey and we illustrate how this rare window into business travel in the 1960s helps us to understand how they coexisted and were experienced by actors themselves embedded in global organizations. We can therefore ethnographically experience the world of the past through collections of documents and abstracts which at first might appear ephemeral. We conclude that archival ethnography based on microhistorical approaches has the potential to be a fruitful new avenue of research for management and business historians.

Helmut Kaser: FIFA Administrator

Paris 2024 is here!

It feels like Euro 2024 with disappointment for England has only just gone - but another global sporting megaevent is here already - the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic games. With 329 events in 32 sports there will be plenty of action to keep us going! The men's and women's football competitions are no different. Although football has its own World Cups for men and women (as often covered by us here!) the Olympics still play an important role. 

The men's competition is really a sort of global 'age group' tournament, with teams allowed to field only three players aged over 23, while in women's football the competition is open to players of all ages, making it a secondary world cup! 

As usual we sat down before kick off to predict the tournaments ourselves, and also randomly, with a dice. 

 

Men 

Alex predicted that Spain will repeat their Euros triumph - ultimately with a 4-2 victory over North African hopefuls Morocco. He predicts Argentina will win the bronze medal triumphing 3-0 ove Japan in the third place match. Morocco won their controversial game against Argentina yesterday thanks to a VAR decision so their rise through the tournament looks like it is on! 

Kevin predicted that Argentina would see gold instead, with their younger generation looking to repeat the World Cup triumph of their elders. Spain would win silver after a tight but exciting final, losing 2-3. Egypt would enjoy a favorable tournament and win bronze, narrowly over Ukraine, winning 0-1 in extra time in the third place match. 

The dice as ever predicted the most interesting outcome - Japan will be champions, after a 6-6 thriller with Iraq, a team famously tipped by sporting economists Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski to eventually rise to world dominance. Argentina would have to content themselves with the Bronze, after beating Egypt 0-1. 

Women 

Great Britain failed to qualify for the Olympics after England, who were representing them, finished as runners up in their Nations League group in December 2023 - but there is still plenty of action to enjoy, as we give other nations a chance at Olympic glory! 

Alex predicted that the victors will be France - in spectacular fashion, triumphing 5-4 over a Brazil in a spectacular final match, ending on extra time. Expectations on the home side will certainly be high. 

World champions Spain would win Bronze after a 1-2 third place match, with former serial World Champions Germany missing out. 

Kevin predicted that the Brazilians, whose performance has gradually improved in recent years, would triumph - with a 3-2 win over Germany in the final. The French would have to content themselves with Bronze, in a 2-0 win over Australia - so often the fate of host nations who do well in a tournament only to be pipped at the post!

On the dice, Columbia were predicted to be champions, triumphing 2-0 over Australia in the final. Canada would get bronze, beating Nigeria 1-0. 

So now we know what we think will happen over to reality-  who's going to win the two gold medals on offer?