This book presents a series of fascinating case studies that show how the lives and bodies of clubs, players and fans around the world are enmeshed with politics. It draws on original research in countries including England, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Mexico, Algeria and Argentina and includes both historical and contemporary perspectives. It explores some of the most important themes in the study of sport, including sectarianism, migration, fan activism and national identity, and shows how football continues to be tied to political events, symbols and movements. This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher working in sport studies, political science, sociology or contemporary history.
Winner of the Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for 2018 Even before Tito's Communist Party established control over the war-ravaged territories which became socialist Yugoslavia, his partisan forces were using football as a revolutionary tool. In 1944 a team representing the incipient state was dispatched to play matches around the liberated Mediterranean. This consummated a deep relationship between football and communism that endured until this complex multi-ethnic polity tore itself apart in the 1990s. Starting with an exploration of the game in the short-lived interwar Kingdom, this book traces that liaison for the first time. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, it ventures across the former Yugoslavia to illustrate the myriad ways football was harnessed by an array of political forces. Communists purposefully re-engineered Yugoslavia's most popular sport in the tumult of the 1940s, using it to integrate diverse territories and populations. Subsequently, the game advanced Tito's distinct brand of communism, with its Cold War-era policy of non-alignment and experimentation with self-management. Yet, even under tight control, football was racked by corruption, match-fixing and violence. Alternative political and national visions were expressed in the stadiums of both Yugoslavias, and clubs, players and supporters ultimately became perpetrators and victims in the countries' violent demise. In Richard Mills' hands, the former Yugoslavia's stadiums become vehicles to explore the relationship between sport and the state, society, nationalism, state-building, inter-ethnic tensions and war. The book is the first in-depth study of the Yugoslav game and offers a revealing new way to approach the complex history of Yugoslavia.
Football in Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe has long functioned as a carrier of the three “non-normal” socio-political drivers that were effective below the surface of modernity, including the official self-image of European political systems, since the second half of the 20th century: Tribal Politics, Imaginal Politics, and Contextual Politics. All three are trends that are currently surfacing prominently on an international and global level. Long before the return of the now proverbial “Political Tribes” by the means of populisms and neo-authoritarianisms in societies around the world, football in Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe worked as a subconscious vehicle of group instincts and political moods that represented, mirrored, informed and influenced political behavior and governmental decisions both in the post-WWII communist and then, after 1989, the neo-capitalist societies located east of the former iron curtain. Football has always been used by both governments and their opponents, including the dissident civil society, to further coherence and to symbolically represent specific readings of power relations, system ideologies and history. Football in Central and Eastern Europe was always able to attract and include large parts of the population, inducing them to symbolically express protest against the government or to sustain the “politics from above”. Through football politics, aspects of the area’s specific political mechanisms are introduced and explained.
This Handbook offers an analysis of the relation between football and politics, based on over 30 case studies covering five continents. It provides a detailed picture of this relation in a wide number of European, American, African, and Asian states, as well as a comparative assessment of football in a global perspective, thus combining the general and the local. It examines themes such as the political origins of football in the studied country, the historical club rivalries, the political aspects of football as a sports spectacle, and the contemporary issues linked to the political use of football. By following the same structure with each study, the volume allows for the comparison between largely investigated cases and cases that have seldom been addressed. The Handbook will be of use particularly to students and scholars in the fields of sport studies, political science and sociology, as well as cultural studies, anthropology and leisure studies.
From its working-class roots to commercialisation and resistance to it - this is football history for the politically conscious fan. Football is a multi-billion pound industry. Professionalism and commercialisation dominate its global image. Yet the game retains a rebellious side, maybe more so than any other sport co-opted by money-makers and corrupt politicians. Soccer vs. The State traces its amazing history.
The Politics of South African Football is the story of people whose vehement resistance and declaration that there could be no normal sport in an abnormal society proved to be a powerful antidote to the apartheid governments assurances that all was well. Oshebeng Alphie Koonyaditse gives an inspiring account of the event-filled journey that led to that memorable Saturday of May 15, 2004. For the first time in World Cup history South Africa, and indeed Africa, won the right to host the nations of the world at the FIFA World Cup in 2010. Yet, South African football history began long before that, and in fact goes back to before the formation of FIFA in 1904.
From its working-class roots to commercialisation and resistance to it - this is football history for the politically conscious fan. Football is a multi-billion pound industry. Professionalism and commercialisation dominate its global image. Yet the game retains a rebellious side, maybe more so than any other sport co-opted by money-makers and corrupt politicians. Soccer vs. The State traces its amazing history.
Brazil has done much to shape football/soccer, but how has soccer shaped Brazil? Despite the political and social importance of the beautiful game to the country, the subject has hitherto received little attention. This book presents groundbreaking work by historians and researchers from Brazil, the United States, Britain and France, who examine the political significance, in the broadest sense, of the sport in which Brazil has long been a world leader. The authors consider questions such as the relationship between soccer, the workplace and working class culture; the formation of Brazilian national identity; race relations; political and social movements; and the impact of the sport on social mobility. Contributions to the book range in time from the late nineteenth century, when the British first introduced the sport to Brazil, to the present day, as the 'country of soccer' prepares itself to host the 2014 World Cup, painting a vivid picture of the many ways in which soccer exists and functions in Brazil, both on and off the pitch.
Sportscaster Howard Cosell dubbed it "rule number one of the jockocracy" sports and politics just don't mix. But in Game Over, celebrated alt-sportswriter Dave Zirin proves once and for all that politics has breached the modern sports arena with a vengeance. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the Penn State sexual abuse scandals and Tim Tebow's on-field genuflections, this timely and hard-hitting new book from the "conscience of American sportswriting" (The Washington Post) reveals how our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and the raw quest for political power are played out both on and off the field. Game Over offers new insights and analysis of headline-grabbing sports controversies, exploring the shady side of the NCAA, the explosive 2011 MLB All-Star Game, and why the Dodgers crashed and burned. It covers the fascinating struggles of gay and lesbian athletes to gain acceptance, female athletes to be more than sex symbols, and athletes everywhere to assert their collective bargaining rights as union members. Zirin also illustrates the ways in which athletes are once again using their exalted platforms to speak out and reclaim sports from the corporate interests that have taken it hostage. In Game Over, he cheers the victories but also reflects on how far we have yet to go. Combining brilliant set pieces with a sobering overview of today's sports scene in Zirin's take-no-prisoners style, Game Over is a must read for anyone, sports fan or not, interested in understanding how sports reflect and shape society--and why the stakes have never been higher.
