“In this article, I want to look reasonably briefly at the writing of football, largely as a point of departure for other articles I hope to write at some point. Writing about any facet of football is essentially constructing a history of football. This has inherent problems, and it is perhaps best to look at these problems by treating the writing of football as you might treat the writing of any historical account, by looking at it through the lens of historiography. The first issue is with the primary material, football itself. No one can cover everything. There are too many games, too many levels, too many tournaments. Even in one single game, the multiplicity of events makes holistic reading impossible. Much of what happened in the past was poorly recorded, and we are left with fragments.” Put Niels In Goal