Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer,c. 1840–1880

The origins of the modern football codes have attracted considerable attention from historians of sport over the past two decades, resulting in a vigorous debate between the self-described ‘revisionists’, led by Adrian Harvey, and the followers of Eric Dunning, dubbed by their opponents as the ‘orthodox’ view. However, this article argues that both sides commit the same methodological errors: an overestimation of the importance of written rules, an ahistoric view of culture and continuity, and a tendency to view the past through the lens of the present. By re-examining the historical record of early forms of football and presenting a broader contextual perspective for the emergence of the football codes in the 1840 to 1880 period, the article aims to address some of the key historiographical issues that confront historians of sport today.     

The Development of Gaelic football and Soccer Zones in County Donegal, 1884–1934

This article examines the geography of Gaelic and Association football zones in Donegal between 1884 and 1934. It will illustrate where these sports were initially played and will show how, by the early twentieth century, soccer was the number one team game in the county. With the decline of competitive soccer in Donegal after 1915, a vacuum existed for the organisation of competitive structures for Gaelic football and the Donegal Gaelic Athletic Association county board was refounded in 1919, having run initially from 1905–1907. County championships were soon organised and these provided a competitive form of football on a regular basis as players could adapt to each code fairly easily. However, many local sports organisers in the north-east of the county were eager to continue with soccer and it was through the organisation of local leagues and cup competitions that they managed to do this. A deep tradition of soccer and strong connections with Derry city and Scotland also meant that association football received priority there. In contrast, by 1934, Gaelic football had become firmly entrenched in the south and south-west. The importance of local organisers within the county and the failure of both the Irish Football Association and the Football Association of the Irish Free State to develop soccer in this peripheral area will also be outlined.     

‘Connected to Something’: Soccer and the Transnational Passions,Memories and Communities of Sydney's Italian Migrants

This paper explores the importance soccer can play in the lives, identities and memories of migrants by drawing on 32 oral history interviews conducted with Italians who settled in Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. Sport can provide an illuminating lens for analysing the experience of migrants, because not only are sports sites of individual, regional, national and transnational identities, they can also facilitate social inclusion or, conversely, become sites of exclusion. Soccer in Australia is often celebrated as a multicultural game. At the same time, the expressions of the complex histories of migration, colonialism, exploitation and racial and ethnic discrimination that have shaped the game have often been silenced. The interviews show that soccer has been a key site of negotiation, agency and at times resistance for first and second generation migrants. We also argue that, while it is the de-ethnicisation of soccer that has understandably dominated media, political and academic debate, the concern of these migrants in recent years has been mostly with the loss of memory and with the removal of an important history made of shared relationships and bonding experiences.     

Coaching Efficacy,Player Perceptions of Coaches’ Leadership Styles,and Team Performance in Premier League Soccer

The coaching competency research has demonstrated the role of coaching efficacy and coaching behaviors on various athlete outcomes. However, athlete perceptions of these relationships and how they affect performance are less understood. Purpose: This study examined if coaching efficacy is predictive of player perceptions of coaches’ leadership styles, team atmosphere, and team performance in a soccer season. Method: Fifteen male premier league soccer coaches (M_age = 45.27, SD = 6.07) and 226 players (M_age = 25.66, SD = 3.96) from Botswana participated in the study. All participants completed a background information questionnaire. Coaches completed the Coaching Efficacy Scale. Players rated their coaches’ leadership styles using the Revised Leadership Scale for Sports as well as team atmosphere. Team performance was based on position in the league log and player ratings of the teams’ performance. Results: Findings showed that coaches’ self-ratings on technique efficacy predicted player perceptions of the coaches’ use of all six leadership styles. Game strategy efficacy predicted higher team atmosphere and team performance. Motivation efficacy was not significantly associated with player perceptions of the coaches’ use of any of the leadership styles, while character building efficacy was negatively associated with the various leadership styles. Conclusion: Findings provide support to previous research evidence linking higher coaching efficacy, leadership styles, and team outcomes. The study expands the emergent research within the coaching competency literature that examines player perceptions of coaches’ behaviors and leadership styles.     

Soccer and integrating Europe’s Muslim minorities: the good,and bad and the ugly

Drawing from recent debates about Muslim immigrants’ lack of integration into European societies, the current article advances a main argument regarding the nexus between soccer and Muslim immigrants’ integration within their host European societies by reviewing dominant theoretical models and focusing on elite European male Muslim soccer players. Considering the growing recent debate about the role of Muslim immigrants in their European societies, soccer has the potential to assist European countries to increase Muslims’ integration level. Elite Muslim soccer players are among the most influential immigrants in European societies. Muslim soccer players could contribute to increase understanding and community unity between different social groups within European societies as many of them prove that identity hyphenation and combining ethnicity and European nationality is possible for Muslim immigrants. Soccer could give more confidence to the generation of young Muslims about being accepted by European majorities.     

Skiing and Sport in the Core Sámi Area of Norway, 1927 to 1964: Organisation,Modernisation and Minority Policy

The use of skis has a long history in the core Sámi areas of Inner Finnmark in the north of Norway. It played a central role in the lives of nomadic Sámi communities for centuries. However, as an organised sport, skiing has a much shorter history in this area. The first sport club was established in 1927, almost 60 years after the first sport club was established in Finnmark. The integration and consolidation of sport in Inner Finnmark was also a slow process not concluded until the mid-1960s; some 40 years after its breakthrough along the coast of Finnmark. The organising of sport in the Sámi villages happened during a time of radical change in society. Until 1950s, Norwegian minority policies towards the Sámi population were characterised as strict assimilationist, or Norwegianisation, policy. This gradually changed towards a policy that emphasised cultural plurality, integration and greater political and cultural rights for the Sámi. At the same time, a state-driven modernisation process radically changed all aspects of the Sámi society. Even though sport had been a central element to Norwegian nation building throughout the twentieth century and despite the important role sport has played in many states' assimilationist strategies towards their indigenous populations, Norwegian authorities never used sport consciously in its minority policy. Despite this, sport helped in shaping modern Sámi society, and in shaping and reshaping ethnic and local identities in Inner Finnmark.     

Ethnicity as an Exercise in Sport: European Immigrants,Soccer Fandom,and the Making of Canadian Multiculturalism, 1945–1979

Abstract

Ethnic sport offers an important and understudied lens into how newcomers – a key population on the social peripheries – negotiate their entry into host societies. Canada was among the top countries to receive European migrants after the Second World War. Soccer participation and fandom were a gateway in their resettlement and an axis for community formation, identity expression, economic advancement, and personal pleasure. This paper explores what four decades of ethnic soccer on the peripheries of post-war Toronto reveals about the local organization of immigrant life and the European newcomer’s mediated entry into English Canada. It demonstrates that Toronto soccer fans were sufficient in number and electoral voice to transform the urban politics of leisure and organization of social diversity, even as their leisure activities were still heavily contained by host institutions. Paradoxically, soccer’s straightjacketed role in Toronto as an ethnic social adhesive and platform for identity expression rendered it largely irrelevant to the general, more settled population, while its capacity to articulate ethnic differences made it a force and symbol of English Canada’s re-imagination as a multicultural society in the 1970s.     

Soccer,Science, and Socialism in the German Democratic Republic, 1950s–1960s

Abstract

Today, science has become indispensable in professional (association) football. As applying science in football promises a greater sporting success, football training is based on scientific knowledge. Hence, the use of science in football is taken for granted and seems to be commonplace. However, scientific knowledge was hardly employed in football until the early 1950s. In fact, its use needed legitimacy. By taking the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an example, this study traces the legitimization of science in football in the 1950s and 1960s. The results suggest that the future promise of science as well as the Soviet Union and Soviet football played a substantial role in the scientification of GDR football.     

Relative Age Effect,Biological Maturation,and Coaches’ Efficacy Expectations in Young Male Soccer Players

Purpose: The talent identification and selection process in young male soccer players is mainly focused on anthropometrics and physical performance, but social factors are also considered in this process. The purpose of this study was to test the existence of the relative age effect and its possible influence on anthropometrics and physical performance and to analyze coaches’ efficacy expectations. Method: Data for 564 young male soccer players (M_age = 13.7 ± 1.5 years; M_weight = 53.7 ± 11.6 kg; M_height = 160.2 ± 11.6 cm) included their birth quartile, maturity status, anthropometrics, a physical test battery, and coaches’ efficacy expectations. Results: Early-born players were overrepresented (p < .05). Early-born players were not statistically taller, heavier, or better at physical performance (p > .05) when maturation and chronological age were controlled as confounding factors. However, coaches expected more from early-born players (p < .05), and the inferential analysis showed likely to very likely worthwhile differences between the coaches’ expectations for players born in the first quartile of the year and those born in the fourth quartile of the year. Conclusions: Anthropometrical and physical performance variables were not affected by birth quartile, and coaches’ efficacy expectations were related to the relative age effect.     

Soccer’s Small Worlds

Abstract

In this autobiographical article about my academic career I explain how I developed my approach to sport and soccer in particular, drawing on sociology, linguistics, and cultural history. This career has been and continues to be characterized by interdisciplinary work and intercultural perspectives and by a variety of working relationships that they generate. In a way I turned into a sports scholar by accident. I am convinced, however, that sport, and soccer most of all, lends itself ideally to a comparative analysis of cultural practices which suggests case studies – both on and off the field – that are open to interpretation from historical, sociological, or linguistic perspectives.     

鬼王重现Sweet vs Soccer

一直以来亡灵都是一个悲剧的种族,虽然阿尔萨斯王子很帅,却老是被剑圣砍的找不着北;虽然毁灭者很imba,却老是被一颗毒球搞的痛不欲生;虽然部队很强大,却老是在人族塔群面前无可奈何。一直以来亡灵选手也都是悲剧性的人物,他们从来没拿过WCG冠军——兽族、人族和暗夜精灵都拿过;大喜哥FoV     

Complicating the “Soccer Mom”

Using Pierre Bourdieu's theories of social class differentiation and class reproduction, this paper provides an analysis of class-based identity politics in contemporary suburban America. Through a critical ethnography of the emergent, American, upper-middle-class “soccer mom” phenomenon, this study contributes to a growing body of research that interrogates class-based, cultural practices of status differentiation. As part of a larger, longitudinal ethnographic study, this paper specifically focuses on the ways in which women, who are driven by upper-middle-class habitus, contest and construct their identity as mothers of young, soccerplaying children.     

‘Stick to Soccer:’ fan reaction and inclusion rhetoric on social media

Abstract

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide, social media reflected a range of support and dissent. US Soccer posted a photo featuring an eagle and the phrase ‘One Nation, One Team’ in rainbow font on their official social media accounts. This paper explores the reaction to those posts by social media users. We examined comments made about the post and, using elements of grounded theory, found five themes emerge: (1) resistance to the intertwinement of politics and sport and pushback to that resistance; (2) patriotism/nationalism; (3) the symbolic importance of out gay players, coaches and fans; (4) general negative comments; and (5) general positive comments. We contextualize these themes in light of (1) the tension around the role of politics in sports, (2) US Soccer’s historical heterosexism and its manifestations and (3) the changing landscape of women’s sports in regards to homosexuality.     

A physiological,time–motion,and technical comparison of youth water polo and Acquagoal

Abstract

The aims of this study were to provide a profile of young water polo players and to compare technical and tactical aspects, movement patterns, and cardiac loads of youth water polo and Acquagoal codes. Ten young (age 12.3 years, s = 0.6) male water polo players underwent anthropometric (stature, body mass, body mass index, chest circumference, hand breadth, and length), strength, and [Vdot]O_2max evaluations. Friendly youth water polo and Acquagoal matches were arranged to evaluate heart rates and swimming patterns (horizontal and vertical, with and without the ball) of players, and technical and tactical aspects of matches (number of actions, passes, player involved in an action, lost possessions, shots, goals, and the origin and types of shot). Independent of code, matches imposed a high cardiac load on players. Vertical swimming occurred more frequently (P < 0.05) in Acquagoal (71%) than youth water polo (45%). Technical and tactical measures also differed (P < 0.05), with players performing more passes and shots inside the penalty area and showing a higher goal-to-shot ratio during youth water polo than during Acquagoal. These results indicate that youth water polo better resembles the swimming patterns of adult water polo and facilitates the technical and tactical aspects of play better than Acquagoal.     

Cultural Imperialism,Nationalism, and the Modernization of Physical Education and Sport in China, 1840–1949

Abstract

This paper examines how missionary educational institutions and Young Men’s Christian Association physical education and sport programmes, in conjunction with the nation-building project of the Nationalist government, transformed and modernized physical education and sport in China from 1840 to 1937. The concepts of cultural imperialism and nationalism are central to this study, to understand how the two interacted in the process of the development of modern physical education and sports in China. This paper argues that the cultural imperialism model is ineffective for an understanding of the impact of missionaries on Chinese society and the subsequent transformation and indigenization of physical education and sport in modern China. More precisely, the way in which Chinese nationalism played an active role in resisting, selecting, and reshaping the cultural products (modern physical education and sport) evidences a process that was an active negotiation, rather than a passive consumption, of Western culture. This said, Christian physical education and sport programmes had long-lasting effects on how physical education and sports became the way to define ‘modern’ bodies as they were incorporated into the wider education programme of modernizing China under the Nationalist government.