In this week’s Takimag column, the good doctor gets nostalgic thinking about following football in the England of his youth. Those were the days, my friend…

The tickets were cheap and the crowds were large, much more proletarian than they are today, and on the whole better behaved, almost even genteel. Expletives were far fewer, and when the referee made a decision against the home team, the crowd would exclaim, “Referee!” When you look at pictures of the crowds of those days, you see people much more civilized than they are today, though the wealth of crowds has increased enormously.