Football (soccer)

This project evaluates the strategy of the English Premier League (EPL) in their commercial strategy of the North American Market. This study explains in detail, the reluctance from this market to respond to commercial efforts from the EPL (Premier League, 2014). Due to the failure in this market, this report closely examines the cultural values that existed previously, or currently, to understand the heightened struggle the English Premier League has faced (Waddington & Martin, 1996). To do this, the report looks at the strategy of the biggest brand in the EPL, Manchester United. As well as its competitor’s strategies from Europe and domestic leagues in North America.
This study finds that, the North American sports market is much more sensitive than other markets. With patriotic views and American Exceptionalism seeming the current explanation for the North American market rejecting not only the EPL, but English sports as a whole (Collins, 2013). Despite this rejection, football is looking like it might start becoming accepted as a sport in the country.  With this indication, it is important for the EPL to start building their brand accordingly for this anticipated growth.
Although the EPL is currently the front-runner for this market, in comparison to success from other leagues, it still needs to build its brand to secure the predominant share of this market in the long term.

The policing of football supporters in the UK is resource-intensive and expensive, with football crowds seen by many forces as inherently prone to misbehaviour, disorder and violence. As a result they are regularly subjected to high-profile, heavy-handed and intrusive policing strategies that are often designed with the imposition of a civil “banning order” on supposed “risk supporters” in mind. This article analyses underlying assumptions about the nature and risk of football crowds and, drawing comparisons with the ways in which political protests are policed and applying jurisprudence from a series of high-profile protest cases, questions the legality of dominant policing approaches to football crowds under both English public law principles and the European Convention on Human Rights. It concludes by proposing how strategies could be developed in a way that both protects the public and the rights of supporters who may on occasion associate with those suspected of engaging in football-related disorder

Soccer is an intermittent team-sport, where performance is determined by a myriad of psychological, technical, tactical, and physical factors. Among the physical factors, endurance appears to play a key role into counteracting the fatigue-related reduction in running performance observed during soccer matches. One physiological determinant of endurance is movement economy, which represents the aerobic energy cost to exercise at a given submaximal velocity. While the role of movement economy has been extensively examined in endurance athletes, it has received little attention in soccer players, but may be an important factor, given the prolonged demands of match play. For this reason, the current review discusses the nature, impact, and trainability of movement economy specific to soccer players. A summary of current knowledge and limitations of movement economy in soccer is provided, with an insight into future research directions, to make this important parameter more valuable when assessing and training soccer players' running performance.

The Football Banning Order was the first Civil Preventive Order (CPO), predating the many similar measures that followed the election of New Labour to government in 1997 by 10 years. CPOs have been held by the domestic courts to be preventive rather than punitive measures that do not need to follow criminal procedures to be compliant with Arts.6 and 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights. After three decades of amendment and imaginative application, however, the original CPO has evolved into a punitive measure that is rarely utilised against those who orchestrate football-related violence and goes far beyond what is necessary to prevent low-level football disorder. It will be argued that in order to avoid breaching Arts.6 and 7, the imposition of this evolved CPO - a ‘super-Football Banning Order’ - should be restricted by amendment of ss.14A and B Football Spectators Act 1989. Further, and of wider interest, its previously undocumented incremental evolution should serve as a warning of how other CPOs could evolve similarly punitive impacts on their recipients.

Abstract

This book is theoretical, in which the relevant parts of sociological and anthropological specialist literature on football and social processes were synthetically summarized. I focused only on the theories that were relevant to me, excluding popular literature dealing with the strategic-tactical connections of soccer as a physical game, the bibliography presenting the practice of the physical training and nutrition of the body, as well as the rich storehouse of related psychological and pedagogical writings and that of the literature referring to the economic and financial, marketing and promotion component of the issue. The biographical books of famous football players are not discussed, either. In the introductory part the sociological literature of football is delineated, making reference to the themes and questions raised, explanatory models, paradigmatic viewpoints, which characterize the „sociology of football”, as a specialized branch with a scientific status, recognized as such by the academic field. In fact, the possible taxonomy, the possible spectrum of the questions raised is examined. By a small detour the social role of sports, and the connections between the mass media and sports, particularly football are discussed, and references are provided on how soccer can indeed be a social issue. Football is seen as a rite, a postmodern deep play as a legitimacy and political-manipulative instrument, about the phenomena of violence, hooliganism and the ultras, about the relationship between soccer and criminality, inequality, racism, anti-Semitism, or masculinity, identity and modernization. We primarily relied on English language, mostly British and American specialized literature, as the largest part of the specialist literature was produced there. (This reflects well the English origins of modern age football, “they invented it” and spread it across the globe. Then they were the ones to write the most about it).

So, the Sociology of Football is an encompassing synthesis of the sociology of football; it also contains illustrations and talkative examples from Romanian football and changing social reality.

On this first level, I have presented the literature on the following issues: violence in football as the most prominent topic in the sociology of football; the role of football as a producer of identity, collective consciousness, and as laic ritual of postmodern society; the relationship between soccer and masculinity. In this last respect, I argue that highly mediated star players can define patterns of normative masculinity as sex symbols and as integral parts of a culture of celebrity. Thus, the way media presents football in general and players in particular, characterizing them and describing their expectations, is in fact the method they build normative patterns of masculinity strongly and closely related to national character. It relates to the way an imagined community looks on itself: it represents outer (aesthetics, the way it looks like) and inner (moral, the way it behaves) characteristics, the here and now of valid characters of masculinity, traits blend with qualities of national ones. I have also looked at the symbiotic relation between football and political power, since power structures football (playing style, economic, political, and logistic conditions, legitimate goals football may express and institute). However, soccer feeds back on politics, shapes to a certain extent the behaviour of political elites (for example legitimizes certain decisions, raises questions, or represents a context in which certain problems can be formulated). The relation between football and media is another important subject treated here: football is highly mediated and has become a TV show on its own, the practice of football, and the logic of media institutions are closely related. Media “produce” football because it needs football and thus football can be perceived as a commoditized popular culture product. In the current era of global media, entertainment industry produces this good.

As the digital revolution continues apace, emergent technologies and means of communication have presented new challenges and opportunities for football studies. In turn, researchers active across the social sciences and beyond have responded and are beginning to carve out a new field of study - digital football studies. However, despite the growing number of empirical and theoretical papers that consider football and its relationship with digital culture, we are still very much in the early stages of understanding the digitalisation of our late modern moment. In this paper, using football as the context to explore the effects of digitalisation, we argue, what we call, hyper-digitalisation has resulted in the emergence of four recognisable trends: (1) Cultural resistance to the Murdochization of football spectatorship and news; (2) The integration of the ‘internet of things’ (IoT) at every level of the football industry; (3) The naturalisation of digital communication across the football industry; and (4) A deep and wide-reaching penetration of deterritorialisation processes. We conclude by arguing that we are witnessing clear changes in the way audiences and workforces engage with sport, entertainment, and leisure. To this end, we argue that leisure and football studies must develop empirically, methodologically and theoretically to better capture the nature of hyper-digitalised societies and the ways audiences are playing with and shifting the boundaries and possibilities for leisure.

This paper (written in 2003) was one of the first studies to critically look at the governance relationships in European football. We analysed the way a sport governing body responds to the pressures of a lobby group through the example of UEFA and G-14 and proposed a recommendation for the better cooperate and governance of European football. Based on stakeholder analysis – national associations, national leagues, the whole spectrum of clubs, G-14 and UEFA - we identified the divergent perspectives in areas such as competition, revenue sharing or representation and compared different cases of stakeholder management across several sports. At the time in 2003, G-14 and UEFA had tried to promote their own interests, but in the end alienating their counterparts and failing to conclude a satisfactory compromise. We argued that the situation would likely to recur over and over within the current framework of European football since clubs which were (and largely still are) the fundamental cells of European football, did not have any executive power within UEFA’s decision-taking scheme although they generated most of UEFA’s income every year. Based on this paradox, we elaborated a new model of organisation for European football with a particular focus on the way professional football – at club and national level – is managed within UEFA. The model we presented here was not only the fruit of our analysis of European football’s current difficulties but also an emanation of our understanding of the methods of conflict resolution that were applied in other sports such as cycling that showed to be quite successful. The success of such a model depends on a proactive attitude from the governing bodies and positive feedback from the other stakeholders. Thus, no matter how successful the new organisational model could be, all stakeholders need first to perceive the utility of implementing such a reform and agree on the steps to be taken toward its implementation.

Die Nationalmannschaft Katars hat zum ersten Mail die Asienmeisterschaft gewonnen. Zuvor hat sie bei neun Teilnahmen an dem Turnier insgesamt nur sechs Spiele gewonnen. Hinter dem Aufstieg steht unter anderem eine intensive Nachwuchsförderung. Bei der WM 2022 im eigenen Land wollen die jungen Spieler ihren Zenit erreichen.

Postulamos que las premisas generales de la Teoría del  Equilibrio Social de Heider (Heider, 1946) concuerdan con las observaciones  etnográficas de procesos de fusión/fisión entre hinchadas de fútbol (Garriga  Zucal, 2002). Nos referimos al fenómeno conocidos como "lógica del  enemigo común", donde hinchadas con un enemigo en común establecen una  alianza. Pondremos a prueba la hipótesis de que dicha lógica explica la  mayoría de los casos de alianzas entre hinchadas de fútbol. Utilizaremos el  software FANMOD (Rasche & Wernicke, 2006) para la identificación de <i>motifs</i>  o sub-grupos en una red múltiple de enemistades y amistades entre hinchadas de  fútbol, descripta en un trabajo previo (Bundio, 2011a). En base a los  resultados del análisis se concluye que es necesario reconstruir los procesos  socio-históricos particulares que subyacen a la construcción de identidades a  partir de líneas de fractura históricas, sociales, económicas y políticas  (Giulianotti, 1999), y evaluar el peso relativo de diversos factores en el  desarrollo de conflictos y alianzas entre hinchadas.

El mito de la Argentina blanca y europea, lo negro como pobre, sucio y extranjero en los cantos de las hinchadas de fútbol argentino. Desde Salvemos al Futbol armamos el documento que pueden descargar las ideas de Javier Bundio y el apoyo de Fare Network en el marco de Black Lives Matter.

This paper explores the role of emotions driven by sports as political drivers. To do so, I study whether the nationality compositions, player performance, and geographic distribution of the fan base of Premier League teams on the eve of the Brexit referendum. I find that increases in the relative performance of foreign players in the 2015-16 season produces economic and statistically significant increases in the Remain vote share by approximately 1 percentage point at the district level. I do not find evidence that the relative number of foreign players explains cross-district differences in voting. I also find that expectations are important and that the effects on voter preferences seem to display persistence over time. I confirm that these results are causal by implementing a series of falsification and robustness checks. This set of results implies that voter's priors about immigrants change not by considering exposure to foreign players (an extensive margin effect) but rather by considering their relative performance (an intensive margin effect).

Due to increasing prevalence of the COVID-19 virus, athletes were unable to train optimally. This study aimed to determine the differences in aerobic capacity, body mass, and body mass index in soccer players as the effect of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: Fourteen male participants were recruited from the university soccer team. Anthropometric characteristics were as follows: age = 20.75 ± 1.48 years, height = 174.35 ± 5.59 cm, body mass = 68.95 ± 6.17 kg, and body mass index = 21.92 ± 0.94 kg/m 2. Single-group pretest and posttest designs were selected to conduct this study. A multistage fitness test determined aerobic capacity. ANOVA test was used to identify aerobic capacity, body mass, and body mass index differences between pretest and posttest on university soccer players. Results: The pretest and posttest were similar in anthropometric characteristics, and there were no significant differences in age (P = 0.382), height (P = 0.106), and body mass (P = 0.068). Our findings showed significant differences between pretest and posttest for aerobic capacity (P = 0.042) and body mass index (P = 0.037) in university soccer players. Conclusion: We conclude that there was a significant effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the soccer player's aerobic capacity and body mass index. These findings may have implications, namely, as functional test's organization, administration, and outcomes while testing the players. Team coaches, trainers, and physiologists must consider the effects of lockdown on the players' performance while preparing players for competition. Further researchers should be established to modify other types of tests, conduct studies with a larger sample and population, and add other variables.

This paper presents an initial assessment of the results of a four month research project studying the Ultras 1 groups in BiH. This research contributed to the Bosnia & Herzegovina Resilience Initiative (BHRI) Programme (implemented by the International Organization for Migration-United Nations , funded and closely coordinated with the U.S. Agency for International Development-USAID) aiming to reduce the threat of violent extremism in BiH and to counter extremist efforts to deepen or exploit community tensions.

Nicholas Blincoe’s More Noble Than War: A Soccer History of Israel-Palestine (Bold Type Books, 2019) is a beautifully narrated and written history of a century of conflict between pre-state Jews and Palestinians and Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians after the establishment of the state. It is a story that goes far beyond the history of the conflict, the mirror images of developments in Jewish and Palestinian society, and the internecine ideological infighting and power struggles within the two communities. It paints in graphic detail the incestuous and inseparable relationship between sports and politics and the importance of soccer, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, in identity and nation formation as well as nation building. It also demonstrates in graphic detail how first Jews and then Palestinians exploited soccer to first achieve international recognition of their struggles and then as nations by dispatching teams to tour other countries and being granted membership in world soccer body FIFA. In doing so, Israelis and Palestinians set an example that decades later became a key pillar of the Algerian liberation struggle in the 1950s and 1960s with the National Liberation Front (FLN)’s creation of its own national soccer team that put its fight for independence on the world map. The skeletal facts of Blincoe’s tale have long been known. The significance of Blincoe’s contribution is that he puts flesh on the skeleton by weaving the facts into a meticulously researched and reported, easily accessible narrative in which he brings key players and ideological trends to life. It’s a tale that is all fact but reads like a thriller.

Listen to the podcast at: https://dcs-b.megaphone.fm/LIT4403670488.mp3?key=ad2e7300cfe9b3f4d918bfd05eaa8bd6

The present paper intends to portray, although briefly, the construction of the image of the black in the Brazilian soccer under the context of World Cups from the period of 1938 to 1958. It is important to highlight the role of sports journals such as Diário de Pernambuco and Folha da Tarde, as well as the role of the Estado Novo in the construction of a new political ideology of national identity.

This article applies mathematical methods to investigating (extremely) simplified versions of the team selection problem for football managers. The team selection problem – obviously a game problem – is analysed game theoretically, but some funny results of a combinatorial nature are also added. In general, the findings indicate that the problem of selecting a football team is a very demanding task. Still, a simple comparison between win and profit maximising game models indicate surprising complexity in game prediction.

At the end of January, it was revealed that the Tees Valley will play host to the 2021 Rugby League World Cup. Here historian Dr Tosh Warwick of Manchester Metropolitan University looks back at when the area last played host to a World Cup…

The objective of this article is to create a typology of football rivalries stemming from historical and/or present conflicts between various ethnic groups. Such football rivalries of an ethnic nature centre on various aspects, including nationality, ethnic identity, language, religion, territory or origin. The article is also aimed at presenting the phenomenon of attachment to a club – the so-called ‘football identity’ based on some component of ethnic identity. Although the article includes references to specific examples of rivalries, its purpose is rather to illustrate the geographical distribution of this phenomenon. The result will be a general ‘map’ of football ethnic rivalries in Europe (that is in member countries of Union of European Football Associations), which will be useful as a spatial illustration and a starting point for further discussion and research. The author has included not only the widely known and thoroughly examined examples of football rivalries resulting from ethnic and religious conflicts (e.g. Protestant Glasgow Rangers vs. Catholic Celtic Glasgow) but also those which have not been analysed yet (from Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, etc).

Konrad Heitkamp was taken aback by the extraordinary ordinariness present in the lobby of the Zurich hotel. In November of 1943, life in Zurich seemed unperturbed by the fact that the countries surrounding Switzerland were embroiled in one of the most devastating wars in the history of the world. Heitkamp realized that as the coach of the FC Bayern München soccer team, he was one of the privileged few who could bask in this oasis of normalcy for a few days before he would have to head back home to Munich. He surveyed the lobby and began waving his hand at some of his players standing across the vestibule. Hopefully, the Gestapo men watching him thought of this as an innocuous gesture, a soccer team coach acknowledging the arrival of his players and performing a headcount. But he could not bank on it.

This essay examines the origins, diffusion and spread of organized groups of young football fans (so‐called ultras) in Spain. The first Spanish ultra groups emerged after the 1982 World Cup held in Spain. Mainly mimicry of both Italian and English supporter styles, the Spanish ultras separated themselves from the indigenous ‘peña’ culture emphasizing instead a more active and visible approach to football fandom. This movement, often heavily supported by the clubs, subsequently spread to other clubs in Spain’s First and Second Divisions. In the second half of the 1980s, mainly due to the increasing politicization of the ultra groups and the eruption of the skinhead youth subculture, violence became an intrinsic feature of the ultra movement and at times created widespread social panic. The escalation of violence finally resulted in the fragmentation and decline of traditional ultra groups and the emergence of alternative fan groups explicitly opposed to violence. These developments set in motion a complex pattern of rivalries and allegiances strongly influencing contemporary Spanish football culture.

This paper explores the question of European integration, the informal networks and the evolution of transnational political society around what Sir Stanley Rous referred to as the ‘common sporting language’ of the UEFA International Youth Tournament. This chapter continues to examine the existence of a ‘legacy of fraternity’ around youth sport and reveals a network of sporting leaders who pushed and pulled the boundaries of European integration through sporting means regularly battling for sporting independence from politics through the height of the Cold War to the Detente. From 1956 it was handed over to newly founded UEFA and the tournament provided a meeting space for youth in Cold War Europe. In the eyes of some of the organisers, such a competitive space was to serve as a common ground for inter-cultural exchange. It allowed older boys from countries on either side of the Iron Curtain to meet, play and experience a ‘cultural’ programme that was a key part of the early years of the event, though this faded over time with greater importance placed on professionalizing youth sport. The event grew into a pan-European meeting place but was not exempt from the rise of nationalism and subtle advances of sport over politics as well as the shift of the event away from a cultural gathering. It was in the eyes of a number of the early leaders more an international rendez-vous for youth than a football competition between national sides.

mots clés - Tournoi juniors, football, histoire, fraternité, politique, guerre froide, jeunesse

The sole owner of the Liverpool Football Club and Athletic Grounds Limited is Fenway Sports Group (legally organized as NESV I, LLC), through certain wholly owned subsidiaries . The economic interest in this company is held by a range of investors, including John Henry and Tom Werner. The only investor holding more than a 10% interest is John Henry.  John Henry and Tom Werner are generally responsible for the management of Fenway Sports Group

Sports Geographer BJ Pheasant has calculated the ratios of needed incoming male college freshman soccer players versus the number of 12th grade boys soccer players in each state. The ratio shows the number of players from each U18 club team needed to play in college soccer to fill the incoming freshman class in each state. 

The calculations use data from the US Census Bureau, USYS, NCAA, NAIA and Gotsoccer among others in its research.

Purpose: The Purpose of this study was to investigate ball velocity of instep and inside foot kicks of university level soccer players. Method: The participants sample consisted twenty university soccer players from Fiji National University, Fiji. All participants have minimum of four years playing experience. The participants delivered instep and inside foot kicks using the right leg. Participants wore a complete soccer kit. Two cameras were used for this study. The cameras intersected each other perpendicularly on sagittal and frontal plans. Motion Analysis Tools (MAT) software was used to determine the ball velocity and IBM SPSS 30 was used to calculate pair t-test involving two tail tests to determine the significant difference of the ball velocity of university soccer players. Results: The results of the study indicate that the mean velocity of instep soccer kick is higher than the mean velocity of the inside foot soccer kicks. A significant difference also exists at the .05 level between the instep and the inside foot soccer kicks of the participants. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the inside foot kick resulted in a lower ball velocity than the instep kick on the part of the university level players.

What you need to Know and what you need to Do to be recruited. College athletics is a jungle and this presentation is a guide to teach you what you need to know and do as a high school athlete to be find a college athletics program to recruit you.

Considérée parfois comme la «Petite Angleterre» du football pour son rôle dans sa diffusion sur le continent européen dès la fin du 19e siècle, la Suisse est sans doute l’une des nations dont la place dans l’histoire du football est la plus méconnue, y compris auprès de ses habitants. Etonnant constat en regard du rôle occupé par ce pays dans le développement des structures du jeu. Avec ses premiers clubs fondés dès les années 1880, une fédération mise en place en 1895 et l’introduction précoce du professionnalisme, le football suisse fait office de pionnier. Pourtant, dès les années 1940, il s’en distingue en revenant à un modèle amateur, qui va subsister jusqu’aux années 1980, lorsque la professionnalisation croissante du jeu l’oblige à se réformer à nouveau. Cet ouvrage propose une analyse de la manière dont s’est structuré le football d’élite swiss made qu'il ne faut pas uniquement considérer sous le prisme national: la présence sur le sol suisse des deux principales instances internationales a largement contribué à l’influence des dirigeants du football helvétique dans les processus de structuration et de développement des échanges internationaux. Au final ce livre révèle les enjeux politiques, économiques et culturels importants de l’histoire contemporaine de la Suisse, à l’aune du sport national le plus populaire.