Football,Control and Resistance in the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the 1970s

This study analyses forms of political manifestations related to football (soccer), observed in Brazil in the course of the 1970s. The article observes, in the context of football, the outbreak of a dispute between conservative powers and left wing forces in the Brazilian political scene. In this period, different subjects, linked to opposition groups, also used the communicative space created around the sport in order to externalise their political ideals. Thus, the sport served the interests of both the state and the Brazilian leftists. These actions generated the involvement of football players, artists and the media in general. In this context, the sports press figured as the main mediator of the symbolic battles engaged amidst football players, coaches, managers and fans, and the official acts and actions of the state.     

Sport and Politics in Archaic Greece

Abstract

This paper analyses the relationship between sport and politics in archaic Greece (eighth to sixth centuries BC). Although the issue of this relationship has been widely addressed by the academic literature devoted to the subject of ancient sports, there are no studies describing the relationship between both phenomena in the archaic period per se, as well as the factors which triggered them. This paper primarily draws on the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, as well as the works of Xenophanes and Pindar. Firstly, the study discusses the place of both sport (agon) and politics in the archaic polis. The second part shows how sport was used in various ways by individuals for political purposes, while the third part presents the role of sport in the politics of the poleis. At every level of this analysis, one can see a strong connection between both phenomena. Social, military, and political changes, caused, in particular, by the second Greek colonization and the new phalanx formation of hoplites, highlight the role of sport as an indicator of political domination – from the perspective of both the individual and the poleis as a whole. Indeed, this entire study shows that from the very first moment of its being shaped into organized events, sport was connected to politics.     

Unlocking the Cape Code: Establishing British Football in South Africa

This paper examines the emergence of modern forms of football in southern Africa during the late nineteenth century. It focuses on Cape Town – ‘the birthplace of South African sport as we know it today’ 1 1. André Odendaal, ‘The Thing that is Not Round’, in Beyond the Tryline, ed. Albert Grundlingh, André Odendaal, and Burridge Spies (Randburg: Ravan, 1995), 26. – and draws on comparative material from elsewhere in the region and overseas. It also locates events within wider social and political developments at a time when Britain sought to establish its supremacy through a federation of the South African colonies and republics. Central to the investigation is the need to discover more about the existence of a Cape football code and to ascertain the means by which William Milton championed rugby in the course of promoting a broader imperial sporting culture. In exploring the changes which occur, the article will pay attention to the stance of the press and take into account soccer's struggle for recognition; the establishment of parallel black football organisations, and the escalation in Afrikaner support for rugby.     

Sporting shades of green: a comparative analysis of sponsored national mythmaking in Irish rugby and soccer

This paper derives from an ongoing study of how modern sports contribute to the (re)definition of national identities in the context of increasing marketization and mediatization of sport at different levels. In this paper, we examine the symbolic tensions surrounding Three Ireland’s concurrent sponsorship of the Irish international football and rugby union teams via an analysis of two television commercials commissioned by the sponsor. We suggest that although different signifiers of Irish identity are employed in the football and rugby commercials examined – and that each ostensibly represents a different ‘version’ of Irish identity – both campaigns draw largely from a common fund of cultural authenticity. Our analysis suggests that Three Ireland has constructed broad texts that comfortably accommodate differing signifiers of Irish identity and that permit the sponsor to trade in limited and controllable degrees of cultural difference. More broadly, our paper demonstrates how national identity can function as a ‘multi-directional symbol’.     

The up-front legacies of France 2019: changing the face of ‘le foot féminin’

ABSTRACT

The drive to develop women’s football in France, a game 100 years old albeit one long-stigmatised, was thrust into high gear in 2011. Since then, a confluence of events and cultural changes, from on-field results and officials’ investment of greater resources to winning the 2019 World Cup host bid, greater mediatisation of women’s players, and more – including the spectacular 2010 meltdown of Les Bleus in South Africa – have combined to energise and grow the game. This newfound dynamism was unforeseen a decade ago and illustrates some of France’s biggest World Cup legacies: the up-front investments underpinning the sport’s development during the 2010s, and the ways the country has repackaged itself as a champion of women’s football and women in football, forever changing the face of ‘le foot féminin’.     

‘If God Be for Us,Who Can Be Against Us?’: Religion and Religiousness in Polish Football, 2008–2017

Abstract

Relations between sport and religion constitute an intriguing field of research. The aim of this paper is to analyze the historical development of a religious face of Polish sport (mostly football). Religion – meaning here the Catholic Church, since Poland is an almost completely Catholic country – pervades sport in different ways. The teachings of Pope John Paul II, who appreciated the role of sport in developing the all-around integrated personality, are still often recalled in Poland. The paper includes several sections. First, the policy of the Church towards sport in the last decades is discussed; then, the question of sports chaplaincy in Poland is presented. Next, public manifestations of religious beliefs of football players, managers, and fans (for example, crossing oneself or fans’ choreographies with religious overtones) are analyzed. The main focus of interest is, however, very popular religious pilgrimages organized (since 2008) by the fans of most Polish clubs. The main objective is to examine some selected cases, representative of Polish football fandom of the last decades, showing the phenomenon clearly. The study has largely been based on historical and statistical data. The information about this period (2008–2017) was garnered mainly from newspapers and fans’ publications.     

The Legacy of the Games of the New Emerging Forces and Indonesia’s Relationship with the International Olympic Committee

Abstract

The Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO) often serve as an example of the entanglement of sport, Cold War politics and the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s. Indonesia as the initiator plays a salient role in the research on this challenge for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The legacy of GANEFO and Indonesia’s further relationship with the IOC, however, has not yet drawn proper academic attention. This paper analyzes Indonesia’s interactions with the IOC until the present time, with a focus on the country’s involvement in sporting events under the patronage of the IOC (such as the Asian and Southeast Asian Games). In addition, two case studies demonstrate the variable relationship between the two actors. First, Indonesia only narrowly escaped sanctions over a dispute on the use of the Olympic logo in 2015. Yet, the country is named as host of the 2018 Asian Games, hence showing high ambitions to re-enter the international sports arena. These incidents illustrate the significance of conformity of local agencies towards the IOC with regard to political positions and power structures. The study opens the field to local – Asian – perspectives on interactions with the IOC.     

Amerika: The Super Bowl and German Imagination

Abstract

The Super Bowl has played a central role in the diffusion of American football in Germany, as interviews with the ‘founding fathers’ of ‘gridiron’ football clubs and analysis of German media accounts reveal. American football and the Super Bowl have also played an important role in the construction of traditional German Amerikabilder – images, ideas, and symbols associated with America. German media rarely covered American football until the late 1970s. At that time, brief highlight shows of the Super Bowl on German television and broadcasts on the American Forces Network significantly contributed to the diffusion of American football and the emergence of an American football league in Germany in the late 1970s. In the process of covering the Super Bowl, German journalists reproduced Germany’s double-headed Amerikabild: America as a model of modernity on the one hand, and as a violent, cultureless society on the other. The press further invoked historical clashes between German Kultur and the dreaded Zivilisation of the West. This exploration of the social processes surrounding the reception of the Super Bowl in Germany employs the theories of cultural globalization, migration, and electronic mediation developed by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai to explain the complexities of contemporary global cultural flows.     

Historiography,Cultures of Remembrance and Tradition in German Sport

Erinnerungskultur (culture of remembrance) is a widely discussed notion in German historiography. First, the meaning of Erinnerungskultur, including the specific role of academic historiography of sport, is described and explained with respect to sport and sport historiography. One main objective is to reveal the diversity of cultures of sport history and the specific obligations of academic historiography. Second, the actors of sport memories and/or Traditionspflege (heritage) are characterised, and, third, some controversial and perennial debates that permeate German sports history are explained and interpreted, especially that of Carl Diem, internationally known as ‘Mister Olympics’ of 1936. All in all, the paper provides an overview of the mainstreams, cultures and politics of history in Germany with respect to sport.     

Spectators’ points of attachment and their influence on behavioural intentions of women’s national football games

Research on women’s football is still, especially in Asia, scarce. The purpose of this research has been to investigate the underlying points of attachment of women’s football spectators and how these influence future behaviour. The points of attachment scale – drawing on social identity theory – developed previously has been modified for the research setting to detect whether they are general determinants or country-specific indicators. Research was conducted in two countries, namely Japan and Germany. Surveys were conducted at two friendlies of the national team in each country (Japan: n = 607; Germany: n = 597). Attachment with the team, coach and women’s sport were defining overall attachment best. Intention to attend matches of the national team was significantly predicted by football attachment and previously attended games, while intention to attend matches of the league was significantly predicted by attachment with the coach and attended league games in the past.     

‘Race’, politics and local football – continuity and change in the life of a British African-Caribbean local football club

This paper focuses on the role of a local sports club in shaping the lives of British African-Caribbean males in one British city over a 40-year period. The paper describes how the ‘Meadebrook Cavaliers’ has transitioned from its origins as an East Midlands parks-based football team in 1970 to a successful senior-level local football club by the early 1980s, before finally achieving a further social and financial organizational complexity in its charitable status, attained in 2009. Attention is paid specifically to the social formation of this largely masculine ‘black’ sport space over time and on how, and in what ways, these developments in local sport in one club in one British city are also intimately connected to wider social, economic and political developments in the UK. In doing so, the paper demonstrates, both theoretically and empirically, how the emergence of ‘black’ local football resonates with social change around ‘race’ politics in Britain during the period 1970–2010. By the same token, this mainly black male sporting space continues to reflect and influence change in the wider political, social and sporting terrains within which the club has been located – and within the dynamic black African-Caribbean communities which constitute it.     

Playing for freedom: Sócrates,futebol-arte and democratic struggle in Brazil

Brazilian futebol has provided the world with several first-class players who have left their footprint on football history. However, no player can be compared to Sócrates; Sócrates was not only an icon of futebol-arte who mastered the ‘back heel’ and played for the Brazilian team in two FIFA World Cups (1982 and 1986), he was also a political activist who fought for democracy from inside the football world and who joined the Brazilian struggle for civil liberties during the 1980s. Interviews with sport journalists, an exploration of my personal memories of Brazilian futebol and the political scene, and a revisiting of Sócrates’ chronicles and testimonies together demonstrate Sócrates’ belief that the futebol arena was a privileged place to fight for social change. Sócrates passed away in 2011, leaving an inspiring heritage of joy, futebol-arte and freedom struggle. His libertarian legacy must be acknowledged in a country where, despite being acclaimed as one of the most authentic cultural expressions of the people, futebol is controlled by a corrupted and authoritarian elite.     

Behind the Iron Curtain: Football as a Site of Contestation in the East German Sports ‘Miracle’

Sport is employed as a lens through which one can understand better the social and political inner workings of dictatorship. This paper treats sport as a cultural institution within GDR (German Democratic Republic) society and sets out to complement the two broad paradigms used to study East Germany: the first, a broad approach under the umbrella of ‘Cold War histories’ and ‘totalitarianism theory’, usually focusing on the few; the second, a so-called ‘histories of everyday life’ approach generally focusing on the many. Using an in-depth case study of the sport of football, the paper introduces a new paradigm: the ‘contested dictatorship’ approach. This approach rejects the broad totalitarian notion of dictatorship as applied to East Germany and shares many of the underlying assumptions of the ‘everyday history’ approach, in particular by allowing a far greater role for agency with much more room for manoeuvre for actors and institutions within the structures of an authoritarian state than ‘totalitarian’ understandings usually permit. Drawing on empirical archival material, the paper reveals the endemic rivalries between key personalities (and even large industrial enterprises expressing regional identities) in a struggle for influence over the game; rivalries between fans of GDR football teams; fan culture and hooligan behaviour as forms of self-determination; and how these issues contributed to the poor performance of football relative to other sports.     

Echoes of the Tragedy: The Sport Memoir and the Representation of the 1950 World Cup

This article delves into the meaning of the 1950 World Cup, held in Brazil after a 12-year hiatus due to the Second World War and two decades after a South American country (Uruguay) had hosted the tournament. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the role of sport memoirs in the cementing of a collective imagination on the Brazilian National Team's defeat in 1950. Anchored on a triple dimension – organisational, tactical and technical – the analysis explores the way in which the loss of the title to the Uruguayan team was experienced by a number of actors – among them players, management personnel and fans – and set in writing by many generations of sports writers. Through the diachronic choice of works published by journalists (which include memoirs, news stories, biographies and autobiographies), the objective is to point to the congealing of a rhetoric made up of negative remarks associated to the football event, such as ‘trauma’, ‘drama’, ‘tragedy’ and even ‘catastrophe’. Contemporary historical perspective, which questions the deep-rooted opposition between memory and history will be turned so as to support the consideration of whether the former can in fact direct, or even shape, the latter's features.     

Hungarian Football: A Socio-historical Overview

This article provides a brief overview of the history of Hungarian football from the beginning to the years of post-Communist transition. In relying on both sport and more general historical Hungarian and English sources, it explores the political, cultural and social conditions that have had an impact on the development of Hungarian football throughout its history. The chief aim of this article is to draw attention to those historical periods and aspects of Hungarian football, which have not been extensively researched. In doing this, the development of Hungarian football will be outlined and links made with broader historical and social processes. Also, an attempt will be made to explain the ways these processes shaped and used football for various political purposes, from as early as the turn of the nineteenth century.     

Jordanian national football Muslimat players: Interrupting Islamophobia in FIFA's hijab ban

Background: Though musli m females exclusion from physical activities and sports has concerned scholars for years, they are still being theorized out of context and out of history and not as agents in their own lives. Within the prevailing context of the ‘War on Terror,’ muslim females are becoming more racialized in sports and are unnecessarily constructed as needing protection and void of any agency. In 2010, a crisis emerged out of the International Federation of Association Football's (FIFA) erratic interpretation of Law 4 which excluded muslim females players with a head/cover gear deemed unsafe on the field. This crisis highlighted the importance of understanding not only the targeted exclusion of muslim female players but also the importance of working with muslim female national football players and the possibilities of them resisting the racializing and gendering logics of a mega-sport institution such as FIFA.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how five women football players on the Jordanian national team negotiated FIFA's ‘hijab ban’ of 2011. Particularly, it seeks the perspectives of the players themselves – whether they are wearing the head and/or neck cover or not and whether their muslimness is visible or not – and their stories of how they negotiated FIFA's ‘hijab ban’ (2011–2012).

Methodology: This paper is part of a larger critical qualitative study based on (1) dialogical interviews with five football players on the Jordanian national team, (2) material the players crafted and used to campaign against FIFA's ‘hijab ban,’ (3) players’ journals, (4) email correspondence and (5) web-based campaigning material. I deploy arab-muslim feminist scholars’ more complicated understanding of the hijab and theorize of how muslim women's bodies are regulated by two interconnected hijabophobias, the Islamist and Western-Islamophobic.

Findings: The findings are organized in the following themes: (1) experiencing humiliation and injustice, (2) exposing FIFA's Islamophobic standpoint and (3) resisting through solidarity and activism. The results suggest that the muslim female football players on the Jordanian national team exposed the FIFA's Islamophobic hijabophobia in its interpretation of Law 4. They acted with resilience and political savviness to regain the right to play while being muslim female under FIFA's laws. This suggests that muslim females are active agents in their own lives and on a global level. They are able to counter the racializing injustices produced by very powerful sport institutions. Non-muslim/Western policy-makers, researchers, teachers and trainers working among muslim women and youth need to consider this example as a frame to their participatory research, critical pedagogies, and physical education (PE) and sport curricula. They need to recognize that we are living a moment in history in which muslim women's bodies are sites of both the Islamist and the colonialist anxieties in their struggles for power. Thus, they need to urgently be engaged in the theories and pedagogical approaches that challenge both the Islamist and the Islamophobic hijabophobias in sport and PE.     

Moments of social inclusion: asylum seekers,football and solidarity

Abstract

Established in 2012, ‘the Seekers’ are a football club in Melbourne, Australia. Initially set up to provide social recreation for various refugees and asylum seekers, the Seekers have more recently entered a team in the mainstream league competition. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper considers how football facilitates forms of social inclusion for team members, both in relation to the action of the sport and the political and social context of Australian society more broadly. In many ways the field of sport is highly contested as players engage with the mainstream; however the solidarity forged through playing creates the possibility for moments of social inclusion in other ways. The capacity of sporting interactions to facilitate social inclusion for male team members is vexed, though there is evidence to suggest that, in the correct conditions, sport can contribute to an individual’s capacity to access employment and educational opportunities.     

The success culture of Nordic football: the cases of the national men’s teams of Norway in the 1990s and Iceland in the 2010s

Abstract

Every now and then – but with surprising regularity – small nations break through to the international level in sports and attract the attention of the global sports world. This paper focuses on two such occasions in men’s international football: the Norwegian national team in the 1990s and Iceland’s national team in the 2010s. We conducted case studies of the two teams, which consisted of interviews, observation of games and published material. The key emerging themes were how sport successes in Norway and Iceland took place amid the developing professionalism of sport, and how both teams built on important elements from amateurism and professionalism in their successful sporting conquests. We argue that some of the team’s characteristics were founded in a specifically Nordic mentality, which at the right time with the right message manifests in great achievements. Finally, the study follows the decay of the Norwegian national team in the new millennium and suggests that Icelandic football could face the same decline in results as Norway did 20 years earlier.     

The Introduction and Meaning of the Word Sport in the Netherlands, 1647–1910

In contrast with the Netherlands’ status as a sports nation, academic articles on Dutch sports history are scarce. In this paper, we would like to establish a ‘textual’ basis for further research. By means of a large-scale digital analysis, we have been able to depict important phases in the Dutch ‘sportification process’. Sport gradually infiltrated Dutch society: first it was mentioned as an English word in bilingual dictionaries, translated literature and ego documents. Then, English sports were described in recreational education books. Indeed, from 1845 onwards, English teachers at Dutch elite schools played an important role in the actual practising of English sports such as cricket, hockey and football. Together with the founding of sports clubs, specific sports manuals were published. Finally, via the introduction of sports sections in general newspapers, sport (as term) was widely diffused in society. Hence, in 1910, Luitje Van Der Wal was the first to translate the English word sport as ‘sport’ in K. Ten Bruggencate’s Engelsch Woordenboek. To be sure, this sportification process did not please everyone. There were warnings about the negative aspects that the adoption of English sports would create. Nonetheless, even traditional Dutch activities became sportified in a modern way.