1st Edition
Moments, Metaphors, Memories Defining Events in the History of Soccer
As the most popular mass spectator sport across the world, soccer generates key moments of significance on and off the field, encapsulated in events that create metaphors and memories, with wider social, cultural, psychological, political, commercial and aesthetic implications. Since its inception as a modern game, the history of soccer has been replete with events that have changed the organization, meanings and impact of the sport. The passage from the club to the nation or from the local to the global often opens up transnational spaces that provide a context for studying the events that have ‘defined’ the sport and its followers. Such defining events can include sporting performances, decisions taken by various stakeholders of the game, accidents and violence among players and fans, and invention of supporter cultures, among other things.
The present volume attempts to document, identify and analyse some of the defining events in the history of soccer from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. It revisits the discourses of signification and memorialization of such events that have influenced society, culture, politics, religion, and commerce.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Soccer & Society.
Introduction: Defining moments in the history of soccer
Kausik Bandyopadhyay and Souvik Naha
1. Football events, memories and globalization
Richard Giulianotti
2. Let the Aryanists know! Brazilian race and nation in the 1938 France World Cup
Tiago J. Maranhão
3. ‘Filip’ or flop? Managing public relations and the Latin American reaction to the 1966 FIFA World Cup
Alex G. Gillett and Kevin D. Tennent
4. Politics, resistance and patronage: the African boycott of the 1966 World Cup and its ramifications
Paul Darby
5. 1982 FIFA World Cup: from Spain’s struggle for democratic legitimacy to Italy’s rediscovery of football nationalism
Juan Antonio Simón and Carlos García-Martí
6. El desmadre: counter-hegemonic fervour in Carlos Monsiváis’s 1986 World Cup chronicles
Patrick Thomas Ridge
7. Africa at the Football World Cup, 1934–2018: defining moments and memories on the field
Wycliffe W. Njororai Simiyu
8. Lessons learned and tables turned: ‘(in)security’ and media representations in the 2018 World Cup
Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen
9. National identity, social legacy and Qatar 2022: the cultural ramifications of FIFA’s first Arab World Cup
Thomas Ross Griffin
10. The making of modern soccer: a product of multiple interdependencies
Graham Curry
11. From Mitropa Cup to UEFA Cup: the role of UEFA in the establishment of a European scale in football, 1927–1972
Philippe Vonnard
12. Celtic FC’s 1967 Lisbon Lions: why the European Cup victory of the first club from Britain was a defining moment for the Irish diaspora in Scotland
John Kelly and Joseph M Bradley
13. The ‘invention’ of FIFA history: João Havelange’s election to FIFA presidency as a historic event
Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui
14. Still as divided as ever? Northern Ireland, football and identity 20 years after the Good Friday Agreement
David Hassan and Kyle Ferguson
15. Moments and memories: football and state narratives in Algeria
Youcef Bouandel and Mahfoud Amara
16. WEURO 2017 as catalyst? The narratives of two female pioneers in the Dutch women’s football media complex
Rens Peeters, Agnes Elling and Jacco Van Sterkenburg
17. The gendering of defining moments: heroic narratives and pivotal points in footballing memories
Kath Woodward
Biography
Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Professor of History at West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India. Formerly a Fellow of the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne (2010) and of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata (2006-2009 & 2013-2015), he is also Deputy Executive Editor of Soccer & Society (Routledge).
Souvik Naha is Assistant Professor (Research) at the Department of History, Durham University. His current research is about the role of sport in postcolonial diplomacy between Britain and India. He edits Sport in Society and Sport in History and is presently compiling two collections of essays on contemporary cricket.
