This book focuses on the advent of professional football in Liverpool and, in particular, the formation of Everton and Liverpool football clubs and their development prior to World War I. This book details the factors that led to the early dominance within Liverpool of Everton FC, and addresses the complexity of the dispute within that club leading to the later formation of Liverpool FC by expelled club members. This book also highlights, via a comparative study, the different patterns of ownership and control that emerged within the two clubs between their incorporation as limited liability companies in 1892. This book was originally published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.
A comprehensive look into early professional football, this biography of Everton and Liverpool’s founding father John Houlding breaks new ground by addressing the important role of football club ownership in the early history of the game. Football supporters the world over are aware of the great rivalry that exists between the two giants of Merseyside football, Everton and Liverpool. This rivalry was created out of a split within Everton FC that gave rise, in 1892, to Liverpool FC. The two clubs subsequently went on to dominate the English game, amassing twenty-seven English top flight titles between them, more than any other city in the country. What isn’t as well known is that one man was responsible for the rise of both clubs: former Lord Mayor of Liverpool, John Houlding. In The Man Who Created Merseyside Football: John Houlding, Founding Father of Liverpool and Everton, David Kennedy recounts the sporting legacy of Houlding. A brewer and Conservative politician, Houlding was a polarising yet fascinating figure. His financial input, first at Everton Football Club and then at Liverpool Football Club, provided the launch pad for the establishment of two nationally and internationally known sporting organizations. By the time of his death in 1902, both clubs had reached the pinnacle of the English game and Houlding’s place as the founding father of professional football in Merseyside was assured. More than just a football biography, The Man Who Created Merseyside Football also details the many other aspects of Houlding’s life—a family man, businessman, and local politician with parliamentary aspirations. His business and political life, in fact, became entangled in dramatic fashion with the Liverpool football scene on more than one occasion. The complete story of this captivating and influential individual is finally told for the first time in this book, in full and wonderful detail.
Presenting evidence from an array of archival and original resources, this book chronicles the development and derailment of sectarian tensions in the city of Liverpool.
This book assesses association football’s history and development in Ireland from the late 1870s until the early twenty-first century. It focuses on four key themes—soccer’s early development before and after partition, the post-Emergency years, coaching and developing the game, and supporters and governance. In particular, it examines key topics such as the Troubles, Anglo-Irish football relations, the failure of a professional structure in the Republic and Northern Ireland, national and regional identity, relationships with other sports, class, economics and gender. It features contributions from some of today’s leading academic writers on the history of Irish soccer while the views of a number of pre-eminent sociologists and economists specialising in the game’s development are also offered. It identifies some of the difficulties faced by soccer’s players and administrators in Ireland and challenges the notion that it was a ‘garrison game’ spread mainly by the military and generally only played by those who were not fully committed to the nationalist cause. This is the first edited collection to focus solely on the progress of soccer in Ireland since its introduction and adds to the growing academic historiography of Irish sport and its relationship with politics, culture and society. The chapters in this book were originally published an a special issue in Soccer & Society.
Public health is a key priority for developed and developing nations. Indeed, many countries have sought strategies to promote health and reduce health inequalities. A ‘settings approach’ to promoting health has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, which has seen settings such as workplaces, schools, hospitals and prisons utilised to promote health. Alongside this, sport has received increasing pressure to consider its social role within the societies and communities in which it operates. Healthy Stadia is a European focused initiative with lessons relevant for global audiences to develop: (i) healthier stadium environments for fans and non-matchday visitors (e.g. smoke-free environments), (ii) healthier club workforces (e.g. bike to work schemes) and (iii) healthier populations in local communities (e.g. child obesity interventions). This book outlines lessons and insight from practitioners and empirical research for those seeking to learn and research stadia as a settings approach to health promotion. The areas covered include: practical considerations for health promotion in sports stadia; empirical research on the sports stadia as a setting for public health promotion; research on physical activity and health promotion programmes delivered by the outward facing community trusts attached to sports clubs; an analysis of the policy considerations for health promotion by sports clubs in school based settings and critical insight and discussion surrounding the use of physical activity and sport interventions to promote physical activity and public health. The chapters in this book originally published in a special issue of Sport in Society.
Soccer, the most popular mass spectator sport in the world, has long been a site which articulates the complexities and diversities of the everyday life of the nation. The imaging and prioritization of the game as a ‘national’ or an ‘international’ event in public opinion and the media also play a critical role in transforming the soccer culture of a nation. In this context, the FIFA World Cup remains the grand spectacle for asserting the identity of the nation. This book intends to offer eclectic perspectives and discourses on the FIFA World Cup, and to throw light on the changing dimensions of football and sports culture in terms of identity, race, ethnicity, gender, fandom, governance, and so on. On the one hand, it focuses on the significance of the FIFA World Cup for nations in terms of hosting, performance, playing style, and identity formation. On the other, it looks beyond the World Cup to highlight the growing importance of a host of perspectives in sport in general and football in particular with reference to art, fandom, gender, media, and governance. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
The study of association football has recently emerged as vibrant field of inquiry, attracting scholars worldwide from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. "Soccer As the Beautiful Game: Football’s Artistry, Identity and Politics," held at Hofstra University in April 2014, gathered together scholars, media, management, and fans in the largest ever conference dedicated to the game in North America. This collection of essays provides a comprehensive view of the academic perspectives on offer at the conference, itself a snapshot of the state of this increasingly rich scholarly terrain. The diversity of approaches range from theory to pedagogy to historical and sociological engagements with the game at all levels, from the grassroots to the grand spectacle of the World Cup, while the international roster of authors is testimony to the game’s global reach. This collection of essays therefore offers a state of the field for soccer studies and a road map for further exploration. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Soccer & Society.
This volume argues for a more quantitative, economic and theoretical approach to sports history. The author notes that sport can have peculiar economics as in no other industry do rival businesses have to cooperate to produce a sellable output. He also demonstrates, via a case study of early gate-money football in Scotland, that sports producers were not always seeking profits, and often put winning games and trophies ahead of making money. Another analysis examines how industrialisation affected sport, how sport became an industry in its own right and how the workplace became a major provider of sports facilities. A look at third sector economics highlights how the popularity of football provided an ideal vehicle for charity fundraising. The book observes that most sports participants are amateurs but at the elite level the paid player has a key role, and this is assessed through case studies of the jockey and the golf professional. Finally, the author discusses and evaluates various theories relating to the historical development of the sports club. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics.
The intention of the book is to highlight the development of a type of football organisation that falls outside of the well documented elite professional game, the most recognizable face of the sport. Specifically, the focus here will fall upon community based football clubs which have grown out of the grassroots game. Well known examples of these clubs in Britain are the Bristol organisation, Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls, and the Leeds based Republica Internationale – both of these clubs have forged links with similarly motivated organisations in other countries who regularly come together in tournaments to express solidarity. Collectively, these clubs have sometimes been referred to as forming a ‘DIY culture’ in football. Their defining characteristics being variously described as anti-commercial, democratically constituted, advocating social responsibility and inclusiveness, and holding an outlook of solidarity that, in some cases, involves political education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
This book highlights the different roles of youth sport, from sport for all and community sport activities to elite sport and international competitions, to suggest significant new directions for youth sport research and practices. The collection addresses a range of prominent management and policy issues associated with the growing interest in research into youth sport. Major youth sport events such as the Youth Olympic Games and the European Youth Olympic Festival are included in this collection as important policy arenas. In addition, the collection addresses a series of under-researched topics including the welfare of young elite athletes, the process of talent identification and development in elite youth disability sport and how young athletes cope with emotional abuse. The contributors to this collection are drawn from a wide range of countries Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Norway. The book ends with an overview of the state of research into sport-based youth development and highlights trends and gaps in the literature suitable for further research. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Sport in Society.
