The Boss in Bronze: Three Statues of Brian Clough

Monuments that immortalize athletes and their feats are an ancient custom. Contestants of the Mesoamerican ballgame are depicted in statuettes dating from 1400 bce, while the Greeks sculpted classical statues of their Olympian athletes.1 And, just as the public’s fascination with sport transcends the ages, so too the deification and sculptural representation of its sporting heroes has reemerged, with deeply traditional, figurative bronze images of contemporary stars bristling outside modern stadia and stateof-theart arenas, as well as gracing civic locations, cemeteries, commercial premises, and sports museums. As befits its global popularity, Association football (soccer) can claim the largest number and the widest distribution of statues among ancient or modern sports, though boxing and athletics, and the more parochial passions of baseball, American football, and cricket all boast a burgeoning figurative statuary.2 Over 250 distinct footballers and a further 150 anonymous football playing figures are now depicted by fullbody sculptures, with these tributes spread across more than sixty nations.3 Historian Eelco Runia has described the desire to commemorate as “one of the prime historical phenomena of our time”—and the vast majority of sports statues have indeed been erected within the past two decades.4 Statues allow modern individuals and groups to construct, reinvent, consolidate, and project their identities by establishing links with their past. As Judith Dupré notes, the monuments and markers dotting the landscape act as political symbols, displaying values that society wishes to preserve and celebrate, and, by dint of omission, those they wish to forget or ignore.5 The recent accumulation of sports statues therefore indicates sport’s exalted place within contemporary society, particularly as a powerful medium for the manifestation of identity, where representations of shared traditions and common origins are combined with the strong feelings of affiliation aroused by the performance of individual athletes. A growing literature theorizes motivations behind, and interpretations of, statues of sportspeople. In a handful of cases, such as the statue marking the black power salute given by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympic Games, or monuments to barrierbreakers such as Arthur Wharton and Wilma Rudolph, commemoration was inspired by wider social or political contexts, and/or an associated desire for reparation and reconciliation.6 Likewise, particularly in Eastern Europe, there exist a small number of graveyardsited statues that memorialize lives lost, often at a tragically