Here at FFP, Socrates isn't just a Brazilian midfielder.

Football clubs in the present age have an incredibly extensive backroom team behind the actual team of players. Where once there would have been a physio, a kitman and a few coaches we now have psychologists, analysts, welfare officers, chaplains and if you’re Glenn Hoddle, the odd psychic thrown in. But alas, even in the ever-expanding universe of football’s backroom staff no one has found any room for the resident philosopher! Here at Fast Football and Philosophy two UK academics ask this question: could philosophers or philosophy in general bring anything to the beautiful game? To explore this question, we are going to put Plato in the penalty area, Descartes in the dressing room and Derrida in the dugout in order to find out if the finest minds in the history of thinking could be dragged kicking and screaming out of their ivory towers and applied to football’s biggest questions. In short, we’re here to discuss the tactical dialectical, the transcendentals of the transfer window and the categorical imperative of the penalty shootout, and whether any of that actually means anything at all.