In the International Journal of the History of Sport article “On Bosworth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby? Who Really Invented Modern Football?” One quote stuck out to me far above the rest. Authors Peter Swain and Adrian Harvey wrote “In the period up until 1850, there were at least thirteen teams playing football in Lancashire” (Harvey, 1432). While this didn’t encompass all the teams playing “football” at this time, It really shows the size of teams playing “association football”. 150 years later, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of teams playing in England alone.

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Women in Soccer: Marta, the World’s Most Prominent Female Footballer

Soccer is sport, at the international level, dominated by men. Male international tournaments receives far more attention and investment than do those for women. On that same note, high-accomplishing women in soccer are dramatically less acclaimed than are men. Marta, a Brazilian women soccer player, emerge fantastically as a female who succeeds despite the tendencies in global football to accolade men more illustriously. Developing her talents by playing street games, she often faced exclusion and was forced to practice techniques using a ball of plastic bags as an improvised soccer ball. She has since risen to fame as ardent advocate for the advancement of women in football and received FIFA’s World Player of the Year five consecutive times beginning in 2006. I felt, as this is my first TIFO, a small biography of her is appropriate given that she is incontrovertibly the most celebrated and skilled female soccer player at this time.

http://www.biography.com/people/marta-21322927

FIFA Women’s World Cup 2015 in Canada

The world’s largest tournament for female soccer, the FIFA Women’s World Cup, is scheduled to take place in 2015, the year after the men’s, in Canada. Begun in 1991, the games have provided female footballers with opportune moments to display their athletic competence on the global stage. Unlike the Men’s World Cup, a nation outside of Europe and South America boasts a victory: the Japanese female team won the title in 2011. Even the United States, a country whose soccer continuously lags behind that in Europe and Latin America, has gained much prestige from its triumph in the Women’s World Cup of 1999. Now, the stage is nearly set for the tournament to take place once in again in Canada. International teams in Africa and North America, and their subsequent federations CAF and CONCACAF, are in the qualifying rounds. Officials representing the cities in which the games will occur met in Ottawa to discuss with FIFA associates the complex advertising and preparation that the Women’s World Cup demands.

http://www.fifa.com/womensworldcup/news/newsid=2197048/index.html

Class, Ethnicity and Color in the Making of Brazilian Football

-The article discusses how the elites in Brazil picked up soccer from the British.  Some of the elites of Brazil would send their children to school in England and when the students returned they would bring soccer back with them and the popularity of the sport grew quickly.  The clubs that were first founded were elitist in nature and also functioned as social clubs.

“The clubs turned into places for urban socializing; by providing participation in or attendance at physical and sporting activities, they prolonged the receptions and soirées bringing together the dominant families from early twentieth-century sobrados (town mansions) in those two cities”(242).

-Football expanded to factory clubs where upper class managers and overseers would introduce the game to workers who would adopt it.  Barriers prevented working classes from mastering the game though due to them lacking the free time and money that the upper class could devote to learning the game.  Over time though workers who were skilled were afforded certain privileges.

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Class, Ethnicity, and Color in the Making of Brazilian Football:

Lopes describes that what while football began as organized social events for the elites it ultimately became a way for Brazils highly disparate population to recognize each other.  This can be seen through Vasco de Gama’s choice of players, popularity, and support and work to “proletarianize” football. (Lopes, 248)  This movement was continued by Internacional and through the national team as well.  However, there are still problems. This can be seen through their description of Ronaldo, who grew up poor and was successful as a soccer player.  But, “by doing so, they focused on Brazilian football as a model for helping poor youngers… marketing thus aestheticizes poverty…” (pg. 240) This is problematic because it encodes that it is okay to be poor and one can escape using football, but is not solving any social problems, essentially giving false hope.

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The First reading for tonight had a quote that is important to my theme in this class. I am writing about American’s making money through the business of soccer. The article explained where that money comes from, though not specifically for Americans.

“Many of these factors are related to the live transmission by television of matches and championships from all over the world. Competitions have come, in consequence, to involve larger values, leading to greater commercial interest in the sport. The number of different professionals connected to football (medical staff, trainers, physiotherapist, show business and marking experts, sports media, security staff, service workers, and so forth) has also grown tremendously” (Lopes, 239-240). Continue reading →

 “Theories of Race:”

Michael Banton runs through the evolution of the idea of Race, ultimately saying that Race is an antiquated idea.  The European world began to try to document the world and their place in it, which brought about scientific racism, or the promoting of the white “race” over the different kinds.  This continued through the Darwin times and started to change in the early 20^th century.  Early social science began saying the racism was learning in the 1920s and now is less of an overt problem, but is becoming more subtle thing.

“Race:”

Mikaila and Lemonik set up a similar argument to Banton, but also add cultural context.  They say that “while people have always found ways to stratify and differentiate in-groups from out-groups, the concept of race emerged relatively recently in human history.” (pg. 5) This is important with the context of the nation because nationalism often relied on a created alienation to rally around, which racism also accomplished.  Another interesting quote is from W.I. Thomas, who said “if people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences.” (pg. 6)  This quote can also relate to the idea of the nation and culture and can be used to reflect either the building of the national identity, with or without racism.  This also reflects an understanding the situation of having multiple nations within one country, like the Vasques or Catalans in Spain.

“Sport and Race:”

Carrington gives a great short summary of race, saying “… racial distinctions are based on arbitrarily chosen physical features, such as skin color and hair texture, that are used to demarcate people into groups.  Thus, “race” is a complex system of representation learned through socialization, and then acted upon as if these distinctions were ‘real.’” (pg. 9) This is a quick and easy definition of race.  Carringtons notes that sports are often used as forms of political resistance, like how Barcelona became the cultural center for Catalans and their team became more than just a soccer team when they were under the regime of Franco.

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This article pertains to the issue of racism in football today. While football has come along way since its time in Brazil during the early 20^th century, the issue of racism is still an ever-present factor during international football matches. We see how CSKA Moscow fans racially abused Yaya Toure, a Manchester City player, during a match in Russia a few months ago. While this is incident is very concerning, an even more pressing issue is the fact that Russia will be hosting the 2018 World Cup and is also fighting with gay rights activists as the Winter Olympics are on the verge of commencing in Russia as well.

http://en.ria.ru/sports/20131024/184335202/Organizers-Defend-Russias-World-Cup-Amid-Football-Racism-Claims.html

Class, Ethnicity, and Color in the Making of Brazilian Football

Introduction:

There’s the acknowledged notion that throughout the history of football, a clubs success has become synonymous with the interest of large companies that wish to make money off of said clubs. (Ex: Manchester City and Etihad or Arsenal and Emirates)

-Ironic aristocrats played that football in Brazil for such a long time, but by 1998, the face of Brazilian football was Ronaldo, a man who came from a very impoverished lifestyle. Continue reading →