Modern football can be quite rubbish: a hypercapitalist industry run by authoritarian oil states, billionaire egomaniacs and willfully ignorant sycophants. The simple pastime of 22 players kicking a ball around on a grass field has become a grotesque commercial spectacle that’s almost as laughable as it is depressing. And yet, despite everything, I still love it.
To help navigate the immense joy, silliness, absurdity, awfulness and greed of football, there’s David Squires. Since 2014, his weekly cartoon in The Guardian, reflecting on football’s current affairs, has become massively popular among online football fans thanks to the hilarious caricatures and obscure references, as well as Squires’ critical voice. His work deals with the overwhelming everythingness of football, but leaves you chuckling rather than wanting to pull your hair out.
Hi David, thank you for your time! In 2021 you made a cartoon about the difficulties of being a Swindon Town FC supporter. How has life been recently supporting the Robins?
Hi, thanks for inviting me! Swindon Town are still a total mess, sadly. The new owner (the Australian plumber, Clem Morfuni) who took control of the club not long after that cartoon was published in 2021, was greeted like a hero, but has turned out to be as inept as most of his predecessors. A group of fans have organized under the name ‘The Spirit of 69’ (in honor of Swindon’s 1969 League Cup final victory) and are trying to convince him to sell. If any Dutch billionaires are reading this and would like to invest in Luc Nijholt’s former club, please get in touch.
Your cartoons are mainly focused on British football and culture, but you’ve lived in Australia for some years now. Does it help being able to look at Britain from a distance?
In some ways it helps to be removed from the chaos, but I do miss the day-to-day football chatter. Although football is the most-participated sport in Australia, as a spectator sport, it is still less popular than rugby league, Aussie Rules and cricket. I live in a small town in a remote part of New South Wales, so the chances to chat football seldom arise. It’s nice when I go back to England and hear the conversations on the street about the game, but I’m sure if I moved back, I’d get sick of hearing everyone’s opinions within about two weeks.
For me, it can be hard to enjoy football without ignoring all the ugliness and greed of the modern football industry. Do you find yourself becoming disillusioned sometimes? How do you stay in love with the sport?
It’s funny you ask that today, as I’ve just been watching a video of Gianni Infantino in the White House and found myself feeling physically sick. So yes, I often get disillusioned with the way football is going, at least at the elite level. I at least have an outlet for this frustration and can hopefully voice the dismay other fans feel too. On a practical level, I’ve found the best antidote for the naked greed at the top of the game, is to invest time in the grassroots, either through playing or watching lower-league or amateur football. No one is trying to sell you crypto coins when you’re watching a game in the park.
Obviously, the visuals of your cartoons, such as emo Mourinho and Lego Arteta, have become hugely popular, but the writing itself is also full of jokes and creativity. Have you ever considered just writing, or expanding in other ways beyond cartoons?
I came close to getting an animated TV show commissioned during lockdown, which would have been an absolute dream. I’d love to bring some of these characters and stories to life in that medium. It didn’t quite happen, but I hope I can one day revive the project.
As a Dutchman, I particularly enjoyed jokes such as Wout Weghorst being too tall to fit in the panel, or Frank de Boer singing Dutch ballads (Vengaboys) after being fired at Crystal Palace. Are there any Dutch footballers or managers you wish you’d had the chance to draw (more)? How would you have drawn them?
Hah, Frank de Boer is one of the people whose likeness I found hardest to capture. For some reason, I just couldn’t get it. I have to admit, I was quite relieved when Crystal Palace sacked him. Louis van Gaal was one of my absolute favourite people to draw, so I was disappointed he only got a couple of years with Manchester United in the Premier League. With everyone who appears in the cartoons, the trick is to try and capture something about their character, so Van Gaal was the perfect subject, as not only does he look amazing, but he also has bags of personality.
Last December, a collection of your work from 2018 to the 2024 European Cup was released. Going back through your old cartoons, they’ve really become little time capsules of whatever was going on in football (and the world) at the time. Reading some of your cartoons again, were there any confronting moments, or topics you wish you had approached differently?
I always find it painful looking back at any cartoon that I drew longer than a fortnight ago. I’m already beginning to regret the answers I gave to questions earlier in this interview. So, yes, looking back through the archives, there were lots of things I’d have liked to have changed. However, without wanting to sound too egotistical, there were also quite a few cartoons that made me laugh, so on balance, I was able to convince myself I wasn’t totally awful.
If you could introduce one new rule in football, what would it be?
Ideally, I’d like to reset the rules to exactly how they were in the pre-VAR days of, say, 2009. However, if I’m limited to one change, it’s that when the ball brushes a defender’s hand in the box, it’s punishable by an indirect free-kick, rather than a penalty. Either that, or players who commit those sneaky ‘tactical fouls’ are forced to carry a microwave oven for the next 10 minutes (it carries over to the next game if there aren’t 10 minutes left).
More David Squires:
Interview with Sky Sports
Interview with These Football Times
Website