“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d,

Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d;

All murder’d: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court.”

(Richard II Act. 3, Sc. 2)

Let us sit on the ground and tell sad tales about the death of kings.

Shakespeare places Richard II on the Welsh coast in view of a castle for this passage. It’s a speech both moribund in meaning and shot through with pathos. A king, facing a battle he cannot win, against superior arms, with only a battle-weary army, oft-broken and of now, absent. He knows his course is run, and reflects on the inevitability of his fate. But enough now of such works of literature. What relevance do they have to the world of football? Well, perhaps more than we may think.

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