Bücher der Reihe Critical Research in Football

Football is ubiquitous and a permanent fixture of modern life. More than a sport, it frequently manifests in broader popular culture. This book examines the significance of football for, and in, popular culture across a wide range of forms, including music, film and social media.

This book presents a series of fascinating case studies that show how the lives and bodies of clubs, players and fans around the world are enmeshed with politics.

This is the first book to look closely at the concept of 'risk' in elite and professional football from a social scientific perspective. Drawing on the wider sociological, criminological and management literature on risk, it shows how football helps us to understand global risk more generally in present-day society.The book explores how attitudes to risk have shaped the modern football business, and identifies those risks that pose a threat to the sustainability of football in the future. It draws upon the work of theorists including Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault, as well as digital media sources and policy documents, and covers a range of topics, cases and themes including political, environmental and terrorism risks, technologies, the governance of fans and risk resistance.In the context of the social, globalized and commercialized realm of football, as well as a global pandemic that has had a profound influence on attitudes to risk, the book argues that modern societies' preoccupation with risk has transformed the ways in which modern football is played on the pitch, organized off the pitch, covered in the media and attended by fans.Including an extended case study of the 2026 World Cup, to be held in the USA, Mexico and Canada, this is a thought-provoking read for any student, researcher or policy-maker with an interest in football, sport, events, sociology, criminology or risk management.

This is the first book in English to closely examine the life of Diego Maradona from socio-cultural perspectives, exploring how his status as an icon, a popular sporting hero, and a political figurehead has been culturally constructed, reproduced, and manipulated.The volume looks at representations of Maradona across a wide variety of media, including literature, cinema, popular music, printed and online press, and radio, and in different countries around the world, to cast new light on topics such as the instrumentality of sporting heroes and the links among sport, nationalism, and ideology. It shows how the life of Maradona - from his origins in the barrio through to his rise to god-like status in Naples and as a postcolonial symbol of courage and resistance against imperial powers across the global south, alongside scandal and his fall from grace - powerfully illustrates themes such as the dynamics of gender, justice, and affect that underpin the study of sport, culture, and society.This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in football, sport studies, media studies, cultural studies, or sociology.

Showcasing some of the most important current research in football studies, this book demonstrates the value of social theory and sociology in helping us to better understand the world's favourite sport.This book sheds critical new light on key issues in contemporary football, with each chapter using a different theoretical lens, drawing on the work of key thinkers from Elias and Foucault to Hall and Maffesoli. It explores issues and topics central to the study of modern football, including homophobia, feminist-informed coaching practice, the racialised experiences of black professional footballers, the concussion crisis and the role of identity in online football communities. It also looks ahead at the issues that are likely to define the research agenda in football studies in years to come.This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher with an interest in football, the sociology of sport, social theory or social issues in wider society.

This book explores social and political issues and trends emerging around the UEFA European Football Championships. It presents a contemporary sociology of the European Championships which, despite its significance as a mega-event, has been largely overshadowed by the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in existing literature.At a time when both sport mega-events and Europe are undergoing dramatic transformations, this book explores a range of case studies and important topics such as changing consumption patterns, new types of sport media, social media, environmental policies and emergency politics, public opposition and co-hosting. It also situates the European Championships within wider European projects and discourses of European identities, integration and enlargement. Drawing on data from recent and historical European Championships, and looking ahead to the next tournament in Germany in 2024, this book serves to open up new debates within the sociology of sport and the study of mega-events.It is a timely and ground-breaking text which will resonate with students, academics and readers who are interested in football, the sociology of sport, megaevents, digital sociology, European politics and culture or sports business.

This is the first book to examine football (soccer) through the lens of diaspora studies. Presenting case studies from across four continents, it considers how diasporic minorities develop a sense of belonging between their national and transnational ethnic communities through an active participation in football.