Category Archives: Football and Nationalism

An Italian Football Renaissance Under Fascism? Cole Sylvester PCQ 1/9/2014

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Italian Football Renaissance

Italian football in its infancy was riddled with arguments and fighting due to the smaller clubs holding a majority over the larger clubs in the FIGC.  This struggle is very similar to the way the smaller states did not want to have the larger states always holding the power of decisions in the creation of the United States Congress.  But the way the FIGC handled the situation led to a split in Italian club football, where the smaller teams were left to fend for themselves while the larger teams made all the money and got the best players.  To add to these issues was the inability of the referees to keep control of the game and enforce the rules.

Although widely considered to have been the best referee in Italy at the time, Mauro was far away from the incident in question, which intensified the Bologna fans’ conviction that the ball had crossed the line for a goal. Among those supporters was the leader of the Bolognese Fascist Federation and future mayor, Leandro Arpinati, who, apparently, led a pitch invasion with his squadristi that culminated in shouting, pushing, threats and some skirmishes. 13 Choosing personal safety over conscience, Mauro reversed his decision and awarded a goal. (Martin, 54) Continue reading →

TIFO: “Bradley on Verge of Leaving Roma for Toronto FC” – by Mac Daly

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My TIFO discusses the possible transfer of a top young American player who could potentially transfer from AS Roma to Toronto FC. This would be absurd 3-4 years ago, now after Clint Dempsey transferred to MLS last year for $36 Million it seems the next step of MLS making money by brining in young and American talent.

Early Football History in England and France – by Cole Sylvester

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Cole PCQ 1/8/2014

In Peter Swain and Adrian Harvey’s article on the origins of modern football, they explain how football’s origins center around a rudimentary rule system that is almost completely different from any of the rules we know now.

In this early form, football and rugby were very similar in their rules and styles of play.  It wasn’t until Sheffield FA’s football culture improved to the point where they were able to host their own cup competition.

This first football cup was sponsored by a local businessman who even contributed a trophy to the winner of the 12 team competition.

Because of this influence, Sheffield FA was able to prevent the disbandment of the FA.  These early games were not commercial pursuits, rather presided over by amateurs.  But as interest in these games increased, the clubs began charging admission to the games as they were now played in commercial gardens and enclosed public house fields.

French Contributions to the Game of Football:

“During the Third Republic conscripts were required to undergo military service, which was often carried out in regiments far from the Seine De´partement. As soon as Parisian players arrived in their regiment, they almost always got together a football team and, insofar as sport did not figure on the athletics programme of French military training, encouraged practice of it by, among other things, requesting that their home teams sent footballs.

Questions:

  • How did the competition between France and Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries contribute to the quality of the players and game of football we know today?
  • How did the changing social and economic dynamics of the players and supporters of the game of football influence the spread of the popularity of the game?

TIFO: “More than Ever, Barca More than Club for Catalans”

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Here is the article, “More than ever, Barca more than club for Catalans.”

I chose this article because I want explore the tensions between the distinct regions of Spain, specifically Cataluña and Paìs Vasco, and the central government as seen through soccer.  This article does a great job of explaining the history of the Barcelona football club and the relationship it has had with nationalistic tendencies for the Catalans.  In the past, it has been used as a catalyst of the Catalan movement, like how they used the stadium as a place to speak Catalan while under the regime of Franco.  It’s really cool to see that this relationship has continued, as seen through this quote from the article, “tens of thousands of Catalans in the city at the heart of their separatist movement chanted in unison: “Independence!”” (AP)

Early Football, Race, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil – by Cole Sylvester

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Cole PCQ 1/7/2014

An interesting idea that the article, The Making of Brazilian Football, brings up is the idea that soccer is a sport that can be learned and played by any social or economical class.  It is an easy game for young children to pick up and practice even if they come from a very poor background such as Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima.

“stocking balls served the purpose for the sandlot games hotly disputed by barefoot players, with goalposts easily improvised from any variety of possible materials”

Soccer became more than just a fun activity for many of the nation’s youth, especially because of the prospects of being drafted to more elite teams.  These elite teams were mainly sponsored by European factories with money to pay the players to play.  They also gave rival cities a chance to compete against each other without actually fighting.  Each team would try and out-play, out-support, and out-fund their rivals.  An environment like this was very conducive to training formidable Brazilian players who had strong national and regional pride for their team.  For them, soccer became a way of life rather than an interesting pastime. Continue reading →

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Sports – by Jordan Adams

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Theories of “Race” 

Michael Banton’s piece on the theories of race help the readers understand how the idea of race came to be and how different races were identified. Cuvier believed that one’s physical prowess determined the quality of their culture and the limits of their mental abilities. Banton’s article explains the theories behind racism, a social response that cannot be inherited, yet can be learned through social practices. The creation behind different races seems to be linked to the belief that whites were superior beings to humans of different color, race allowed European colonists to justify their capitalist motives in foreign territories.

Banton points out that while discrimination and crime are inevitable parts of society, racial discrimination places certain people within a perceived social category solely based off of differences in appearance. The theories of race piece also explain a shift in the use of different racial identifications from one that justified exploitation of labor to practices of expulsion.

Race

Mikalila and Lemonik declare that race was born out of capitalist beliefs, those who could not advance as quickly or as efficiently as the Europeans did must be lesser beings.  Colonizing the Irish helped establish a racial dominance that the British spread throughout the expansion of their empire. If race was not born out of capitalism it must have been a belief founded in religion where whites claimed that blacks must be lesser beings because they believed they were the descendants of Ham. What caught my attention was the creation of the IQ test in 1905 Continue reading →

TIFO: “How Eusebio’s Soccer Exploits Challenged European and African Identities”

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This article I found discusses the player Eusébio da Silva Ferreira who was born in Mozambique before the country was independent and played soccer for a Lisbon club team along with the Portugal national team.

Also despite being from Africa he was voted European player of the year in 1965. The article discusses the impact he has had on soccer in Mozambique and Africa and how his career blazed the trail for African players to play for European clubs.

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Sports – by Eamon Bousa

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In the first set of readings race is defined as emerging from the capitalist and colonist experiences of Europeans who sought to justify their dominance and control foreign resources, land and people. The concept of race defined individuals according to physical characteristics and implied a certain disposition and character that would be unchangeable for the individual and their descendants.

The “science” behind race though proved to be shaky and ever changing based on individual circumstances and a non-uniform number of classifications across the world. Some societies, such as the US used the “one drop rule” which classified a person with any African ancestry as black, while the South African government under Apartheid would classify mixed race individuals as colored. Some racial theorists would also break down groups even further and consider the white race to actually be a collection of races.

This disparity in definitions and classifications along with a lack of biological evidence in favor of a biological differential between the popular concepts of race led modern scientists to discard the classification in the physical sciences but the concept lives on in the social sciences. The beliefs people still hold about race and its implications continue to affect modern societies despite its lack of scientific grounding.

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Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Sports – by Cole Sylvester

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Cole PCQ 1/6/2014

The article, Theories of “Race” by Michael Banton, takes a look at the idea that “race” does not have a biological reason or empirical existence. Rather, the idea that there are separate “races” of humans who are in some way cognitively or physiologically different from one another gets turned on its head in the 1920s with the advent of racial sociology. Race became known as a mental reaction that “made [distinctive peoples] conscious of what distinguished them” thus “social life built up frustration which individuals released on to scapegoats in the form of displaced aggression”.

The “distinctive peoples” mentioned in Robert E. Park’s ecological theory were only made separate by European capitalism’s need for cheap un-free labor. Because of the early advent of the idea of separate distinctive races, human society has created an environment of subconscious discrimination for anyone who is perceived as different, much like the thinking of 19th century scientists divided Homo sapiens into three subspecies (or races). Instead of a philosophy of inferiorization and exploitation of the 19th century subspecies, our modern globalized society has instead turned to ethnic, religious, and economical “races” that we still create prejudices and discriminate against. Continue reading →

Race and Science, Nationalism and Globalization – by MS

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Unequal Development:

In the eighteenth century was the first attempt to utilize race as a scientific concept. A French anatomist Cuvier started this in 1817 and he divided the races into three subspecies Caucasians, Mongolians and Ethiopians.  All this make different races start being more superior to others. Cuvier states “ whites had gained dominion over the world and made the most rapid progress in science. ‘Yellows’ were less advanced, and blacks degraded”. So race was used as a taxon. To spread the ideology they used novels and people who were notable.

Early Social Science:

The ecological theory developed by Robert E. Park in Chicago maintained that migration brought distinctive people into contact; competition made them conscious of what distinguished them, and those in a superior status developed prejudice as a defensive reaction.

Reaction: Competition creates racial tension and this is why we see migrant people face difficulties when they migrate to a new country. How can science be the way Continue reading →