political football vs tussle

political football

noun
  • A contentious political issue or problem that is often debated or discussed, but that remains unresolved; an issue or problem which is avoided by authorities and handed off to others. 

  • Ongoing unproductive wrangling or posturing between political factions, resulting in failure to deal with an issue or problem in a decisive or appropriate way. 

tussle

noun
  • A conflict, an argument, a disagreement. 

  • A physical fight or struggle. 

verb
  • To have a tussle. 

How often have the words political football and tussle occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )