Alex Hess

Alex Hess has been a freelance football writer for nearly a decade, during which time his byline has appeared regularly in FourFourTwo, The Independent, GQ, Football365, ESPN, The Blizzard and any other outlet willing to wave money at him. He is also a staff subeditor at the Guardian – for whom he also writes – working across the Sport and Culture desks. Fittingly enough, his writing tends to concentrate on the intersection between sport and culture, be it how modern football became obsessed with nostalgia, how the Swiss national team became a symbol for multiracial unity, or what the evolution of shirt sponsors tells us about the Premier League. He has written match reports, interviews, opinion pieces, minute-by-minute coverage, breaking news and even – on one especially glamorous day – ghost-written a column for Burnley centre-back Ben Mee. But most often he writes in-depth features that situate football within a wider social or cultural context. He also writes about films and television.