2025 Shortlist Interview: Miguel Delaney

Miguel Delaney’s States Of Play: How Sportswashing Took Over Football has been shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2025.

What is your book about?

“The subtitle says fundamentally what the book is about, but that’s really the platform for a discussion of where football is in 2025, how it’s being changed, how it’s been beset by much wider geopolitical forces beyond its control, its political economy, all of that, and whether this is actually good, but really mostly bad for the national game.

“The starting point goes back almost a decade. I remember starting to think about where football was going, how specifically it was becoming a sport dictated by money in a way I think people didn’t really consider possible for most of its history. It began to occur to me that there was a bigger book to be written here linking all these disparate themes that I was writing about.

“It’s probably not a coincidence that the book came together as an idea when I actually started actively researching them just after I got back from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the same year that Manchester City won the Treble and Saudi Arabia bagan its big push for the Saudi Pro League.”

How does it feel to be shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award?

“You only have to look at the list of winners to realise how important being shortlisted is. The honour deepens when you look at those shortlisted every year, and some of those beaten, to realise just how prestigious this award is.

“It’s the most prestigious award in sports writing and I’ve read most of the books on the winners list. So, the possibility to be included in the shortlist is a huge honour and I suppose to a certain degree is fulfilling a career ambition to just be included.”

What would it mean to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award?

“It would be an ambition fulfilled. There’s been a long running debate about the place of sport writing in literature, but the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award is testament to how this is about something more.

“It’d be an honour to sit alongside the former winners, particularly for something I poured my soul into. I feel very passionate about football and about journalism, and the book brought those two things together. I’d be very touched.”

2025 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award shortlist:

• Finding the Edge by Sir James Anderson
• Ultra Women by Lily Canter and Emma Wilkinson
• States of Play by Miguel Delaney
• The Last Bell by Donald McRae
• Engulfed by James Montague
• Test Cricket by Tim Wigmore
• The Escape by Pippa York and David Walsh

About the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 

The William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award is the longest established and most valuable literary sports-writing prize in the world. First awarded in 1989, it aims to reward excellence in sports writing and provide recognition to authors who bring the world of sport to life through their work.

This year’s winner will be crowned at a central London ceremony on Tuesday, 25th November, where they will also claim a £30,000 prize and the coveted William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award trophy. Shortlisted authors will receive a leather-bound copy of their book along with £3,000 each.

The 2025 judging panel will be chaired by Alyson Rudd, with Clarke Carlisle, Elis James, Gabby Logan, Mark Lawson, Dame Heather Rabbatts and Michelle Walder making up the rest of the panel.