From the left wing? Momentum and McDonnell launch football initiative before Euro 2016

A new chapter is being written in the long history of sport and left-wing politics with the launch of Momentum Football.

The Corbynista pressure group has teamed up with John McDonnell and Philosophy Football to launch a series of discussions in time for Euro 2016.

Momentum aims to take advantage of the expected surge of coverage next month by holding its football first event on the day England play their opening match against former Cold War foes Russia in Marseilles.

The group has signed up McDonnell for its screening on Saturday 11 June and the shadow Chancellor will provide half-time and post-match analysis “of the sort you’ve never heard before”.

McDonnell, who describes himself as coming “from a family of Liverpool FC supporters”,  is expected to range over football, patriotism, politics and the England team.

“Jeremy Corbyn’s unlikely Labour leadership bid and Leicester City’s even more unlikely Premiership campaign shows that the remarkable can happen and another future is possible,” a spokesman for Momentum said today.

“Momentum Football wants to contribute to that different future. We seek to establish a broad alliance of football fans, players, teams and organisations that, not only want to make football more inclusive, democratic and fair but also want to use football itself as a force for social, political and economic change.”

The event, in London, will also feature Mark Perryman, co-founder of Philosophy Football and editor of 1966 And Not All That, as well as David Goldblatt, author of The Game of Our Lives: The Meaning and Making of English Football, winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2015, Richard Weight, a cultural historian, Claus Melchior from German football fanzine Der Tödliche Pass, Marcela Mora y Araujo, an Argentine football writer, Tom Perez, co-director of Football Beyond Borders, and Carrie Dunn, author of The Roar of the Lionesses: Women’s Football in England.

The initiative comes 20 years after after Labour supporters David Baddiel and Frank Skinner teamed up with The Lightning Seeds to record the iconic Three Lions football anthem.

To register for Momentum Football’s first event click here.