In recent years, sport has been used as an instrument through which wider development objectives are pursued. This includes sport as a means to create awareness about the risks of HIV; sport as a vehicle to counter inter-group hostility; and sport as an environment where children can find respite in the wake of military conflict. The use of sport for the purposes of development is neither simple nor inherently successful. It is therefore regrettable that some of the agents and organisations involved in development programs provide idealistic accounts of their activities, thus suggesting that field work is unproblematic. By contrast, this book provides a critical approach to sport-for-development, acknowledging the potential of this growing field but emphasising challenges, problems and limitations - particularly if programs are not adequately planned, delivered or monitored. The book features both critical theory and reflective praxis, and will thus be useful to both academics and practitioners.

College Sports and Institutional Values in Competition interrogates the relationship between athletics and higher education, exploring how college athletics departments reflect many characteristics of their institutions and are also susceptible to the same challenges in delivering on their mission. Chapters cover the historical contexts and background of campus athletics, issues and institutional tensions over market pressures, the spectacle of college athletics and how this spectacle influences athlete experiences, and the ways in which leaders are navigating these issues. Through stories of higher education that focus on the ways athletic departments leverage their institutional values, this book encourages readers to examine the purpose, mission, and academic values of their institutions, and to evaluate the role of their athletic programs, to improve outcomes and experiences on campus for students and student-athletes alike.

The Albion Miscellany collects together all the vital information you never knew you needed to know about West Brom. In these pages you will find irresistible anecdotes and the most mindblowing stats and facts. Heard the one about the Albion star who thought there was a different, hotter sun on a pre-season trip to Portugal? How about the winger who bought a shed off a fan during a series of corners? Or the GBP2 million acquisition who turned out to be Cyrille Regis's nephew? Do you know who gave rise to the club's 'Baggies' nickname? Why Albion officials painted a match ball with gold and stuck a stuffed thrush on top? Or which club record Lateef Elford-Alliyu holds? All these stories and hundreds more appear in a brilliantly researched collection of trivia - essential for any Baggies fan who holds the riches of the club's history close to their heart.

Founded in 1904 by representatives of the sporting organisations of six European nations then expanding into the Americas, Asia and Africa FIFA has developed to become one of the most high profile and lucrative businesses in the global consumer and cultural industry. Recent years however have been characterised by a series of crises leaving the organisation open to critique and exposure, and creating a soap operatic narrative of increasing interest to the global media.
In this critical new account of one of the world s most important sporting institutions, Professor Alan Tomlinson investigates the history of FIFA and the underlying political dynamics characterising its growth. The book explores the influence of the men who have led FIFA, the emergence of the World Cup as FIFA s exclusive product, FIFA s relationships with other federations and associations, the crises that have shaped its recent history, and the issues and challenges that are likely to shape its future. Particular focus is given to selected moments in the post- Havelange administration and the way in which FIFA, its current president Joseph Blatter and some key close colleagues have responded to and survived successive scandals. The book provides a foundation for understanding the growth and development of what is widely accepted as the world s most popular sport; sheds light on the shifting politics of nationalism in the post-colonial period; and reveals the opportunistic forms of personal aggrandizement shaping an increasingly media-influenced and globalizing world in which international sport was both a harbinger and an early reflection of these trends and forces.

Fascinating and provocative, this is essential reading for anybody with an interest in soccer, sport and society, sports governance, or global organisations.
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This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach to analyzing the nature of 'competition' and 'competitive advantage' within the U.S. pro sport industry. By many measures, the four major pro sports leagues in the U.S. - the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Baseball (MLB) - are now some of the most successful business entities in the country. While these established leagues have generally been highly profitable throughout their respective existences, the past two decades have been particularly lucrative, with franchise values in all four leagues growing rapidly, and at levels well beyond market rates of return. Within this context, the book seeks to explore the nature of the competitive advantage that these leagues apparently possess. The purpose is to identify not only how these leagues have been able to get to where they are today, but also to examine the competitive threats and opportunities that these leagues face as they move forward. A key contribution of the book is that it analyzes these issues from a multi-disciplinary approach including a traditional economics perspective, public policy and public choice theory and strategic management, to provide a parallel explanation for the success of each of the four major leagues. It argues that no single conceptual approach can, in itself, adequately explain the full richness of the issue. Its stresses that these various approaches should generally be viewed as complements, rather than as being mutually exclusive, and that a full understanding of the issue requires one to adopt a multi-disciplinary perspective, making it of interest to scholars in strategic management, sport management, and economics. It can serve as an effective teaching tool in both graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses for students in these fields, and is particularly useful for faculties seeking to emphasize to their students the importance of a multi-disciplinary, integrative, approach when analyzing business and management issues. The book may also be of interest to leaders within the sport industry itself, and will help to provide insight and perspective as leagues seek to enhance their competitive advantage in the marketplace.

In 2012, over four billion people tuned in to watch the London Summer Olympics. As the single largest mega-event in the world, the Olympics has the power to captivate the global imagination. Long before athletes vie for a gold medal, however, competition between cities eager to host the Games kicks off with a rigorous bid process. The lengthy and expensive endeavor to host the Olympics is as high-stakes as any sporting event. Rather than encouraging cities to refrain from bidding, Bidding for Development takes a policy approach that challenges stakeholders to bid responsibly and strategically in pursuit of concrete outcomes. Every bid city has the potential to accelerate long-term transportation development through a strategic and robust planning process. This book concentrates on the phenomenon of repeat Olympic bids and the opportunities that may come from bidding, particularly for those cities that never win the Games. In this context, Bidding for Development explores the intersection between transportation infrastructure development, the Olympic bid process, and the resulting legacies experienced by bid losers. The findings address the central question: how can participating in the Olympic bid process accelerate transportation development regardless of the bid result? In response, this book presents a Bid Framework outlining how and when cities may use the bid to unite resources, align transportation priorities, and empower leaders to achieve urban development objectives in preparation for the Olympic bid. The Bid Framework is then applied to two case studies, Manchester and Istanbul, to examine each bid loser's effectiveness in using the bid process to catalyze transportation development. Concurrently, the book takes into consideration how the International Olympic Committee's evolving bid regulations and requirements relate to urban development and positive social legacy. Bidding for Development delivers actionable recommendations for all Olympic stakeholders to improve the value of the bid process and transportation benefits beyond the Games.

Football is the most popular sport on earth, and a near-universal means of expressing collective identification. This book investigates the uses made of football to create, shape and foster national identities in Spain since the beginning of the twentieth century. Its focus is on the manner in which football reporting has been utilized to cultivate Spanish, Catalan and Basque national myths and stereotypes in different historical circumstances. Football and National Identities in Spain shows the changing and artificial nature of myths and exposes the often dark vested interests behind the propagation of national narratives through soccer. This book analyses Spanish, British, French, German and Italian media to tell the fascinating story of how the Spanish national team went from perennial underachiever to one of the most lauded in the history of the game and the profound implications this transformation had for the national and international image of Spain.

Global sports events are rarely far from the public eye. Such mega-events are about much more than the sporting competitions themselves. They entail global exposure and intense struggles by different stakeholders. This is the first book to examine sports mega-events from a mobilities perspective. It analyses the 'mobile construction' of global sports mega-events and the role this plays in managing labour, imaginaries, policies and legacies. In particular, the book focuses on the tension between the various mobilities and immobilities that are implied in the process of constructing a mega-event. It seeks to uncover the ways in which an event is a series of fluid interactions that occur sequentially and simultaneously at multiple scales in diverse spheres of interaction. Contributions explore the dynamics through which mega-events occur, revealing the textures and nuance of the complex systems that sustain them, and the ways that events ramify throughout the international system.

The history of Cairo's football fans is one of the most poignant narratives of the 25 January 2011 Egyptian uprising. The Ultras Al-Ahly and the Ultras White Knights fans, belonging to the two main teams, Al-Ahly F.C. and Zamalek F.C respectively, became embroiled in the street protests that brought down the Mubarak regime. In the violent turmoil since, the Ultras have been locked in a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. Tracing these social movements to explore their role in the uprising and the political dimension of soccer in Egypt, Ronnie Close provides a vivid, intimate sense of the Ultras' unique subculture. Cairo's Ultras: Resistance and Revolution in Egypt's Football Culture explores how football communities offer ways of belonging and instill meaning in everyday life. Close asks us to rethink the labels 'fans' or 'hooligans' and what such terms might really mean. He argues that the role of the body is essential to understanding the cultural practices of the Cairo Ultras, and that the physicality of the stadium rituals and acerbic chants were key expressions that resonated with many Egyptians. Along the way, the book skewers media cliches and retraces revolutionary politics and social networks to consider the capacity of sport to emancipate through performances on the football terraces.

• How can managers design and implement effective high performance programmes in sport?
• What are the key challenges in managing elite athletes, sports people and teams?

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive introduction to management practice, process and policy in elite and high performance sport (HPS). Drawing on real-world case-studies of elite sport around the world, the book shows a conceptual framework for studying and analysing high performance sport and introduces the skills and techniques that managers and administrators will need to develop effective HPS programmes.

The book examines the macro level factors that determine a nation s sporting success, including political, social and cultural elements, and then moves on to unpack the specifics of elite athlete and team management at a micro level. Adopting an integrated, holistic approach throughout, the book highlights best practice in every key area of an HPS programme, including:

• defining performance and success
• organizational structure and leadership
• finance, funding and marketing
• coaching and coach development
• talent identification and development
• competition and events
• training and facilities
• scientific research and sport science support.

The book features contributions from world-leading sport management academics as well as practitioners with experience of managing HPS programmes at world and Olympic level. Each chapter includes a full range of useful features, such as summaries, case-studies, review questions and guides to further reading. This is essential reading for all serious students and professionals working in sport management or high performance sport.

The Olympics Games are the biggest and most significant mega-sport event in the world. Planning and then staging the Olympic Games is a highly complex task which is exasperated by the fact that the Games are continually moving and not held consecutively in the same city. This means that start-up knowledge is required for each Olympics. Given the massive scale, scope and complexity of the Games it is surprising that very little research has been published that explores how the event is managed and organised. While the Games themselves are held over two weeks, the planning and preparation from bid stage to completion can be more than a decade in the making. The express purpose of this volume is to critically examine the planning, management and operation of the Olympic Games as the world's premier mega-sport event. The authors analyse and discuss how Olympic organisers and related stakeholders might effectively manage and deliver the Games, taking into account what has been learned from previous Olympics as well as the emergence of models of best practice from the management, project management and sport management literature.

In recent decades ceremonies stood in Olympiads as both vehicles of cultural values and shows embracing the banal and the everyday. But how much do we understand them as forms of public art? This book examines the London 2012 opening and closing ceremonies and the handover event to Rio for the 2016 Olympics as articulations of national and cosmopolitan belonging. It is argued that embodied and projected performances of Britishness and Brazilianness embraced both artistic styles and the contemporary digital turn, refinement and banality. Combinations of art and technology reflected a vision of humanity in motion complying with the Olympic values of fairness, beauty and embodied well-being. The three ceremonial performances supported imaginative travel on stage, on big screens and in musical genres. This travel, at once mediated, embodied and experiential, created an ideal form of 'human': a tornadoros. A creative worker and a tourist, the tornadoros manipulates audio-visual narratives of culture and identity for global Olympic audiences. Spanning Sociology, Sports Studies, Culture and Media Studies, Performance Studies and Tourism Studies, this is a highly interdisciplinary and original perspective on the Olympics.

Taking part in a sport means that one must acquire the relevant skills: mental, physical and strategic. This book presents a new perspective on the role of skills, knowledge and intentionality in sporting contexts, examining how these skills and practical 'know how' can be perfected to a level of expertise. Contributors study broader trends of how we can best understand the role of skills, as well as using case studies of expertise to add depth and nuance to existing scholarship. This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.

The latest release in the Remarkable illustated sports series features Britain's idyllic village cricket grounds. Featuring original photography from all corners of the British Isles. Written by Brian Levison, author of the 8,000-selling Remarkable Cricket Grounds, an Amazon No.1 bestseller.

Norwich City On This Day revisits all the most magical and memorable moments from the Canaries' rollercoaster past, mixing in a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable diary - with an entry for every day of the year. From the club's formation in 1902 to the Premier League era, City fans have witnessed promotions and relegations, European adventures and Cup runs, hard times and hard-fought local derbies - all featured here. Timeless greats such as Duncan Forbes and Martin Peters, Ron Ashman, Kevin Keelan, Darren Huckerby and Mark Bowen all loom larger than life. Revisit 9th February 1980, when Justin Fashanu volleyed home the Goal of the Season against champions Liverpool. 18th March 1959: an FA Cup semi for the Third Division giantkillers of Man U and Spurs. Or 20th October 1993: City become the first and only British team to win away at Bayern Munich.

No ground in the world can compete with the Oval's illustrious sporting history. Not just the scene of some of cricket's greatest moments -- from the birth of the Ashes to Fred Trueman's 300th wicket -- the Oval also hosted the first-ever football and rugby internationals in England, and the first-ever FA Cup Final. This stunning 240 page coffee table book reflects back on the rich history that has unfolded under the shadow of the world's most famous Gasometer -- from Don Bradman's farewell innings to the rock concert by The Who. Meticulously researched and featuring some of the best sports photographs ever taken, Oval Reflections is a fitting tribute to the past, present and future of 'the people's ground'.

Nowadays, sports Mega-events - with the Olympic Games leading the way - go over immense effort to showcase their environmental credentials. With that in mind, this book compares and contrasts the environmental credentials of four Olympic Host cities starting with Sydney 2000, the host of the first Green Summer Olympics, and culminating with London 2012. Setting out a comparative cross-national study that makes extensive use of perspectives offered by environmental sociology, this book showcases the scientific analytical vigour of this sociological sub-discipline. Since in most cases, the linkages between hosting the Games and the environment that are made by the general public and policy-makers are mostly in relation to the regeneration of the host city, this book engages with this type of environmental related contributions that can be made by Olympic Games hosting. Yet, inspired by the emphasis that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gives on the environmental impact and legacy of Games in terms of the Ecological Modernization (EM) perspective, the book engages with the potential imbued by Olympic Games hosting for the EM of the host nation.

The 1990s, what a time to be an Evertonian! After a decade of success in the 1980s which saw cup and league wins, the 1990s brought brushes with relegation, financial ups and downs, a club drifting without purpose; it was a decade that saw Everton fall irrevocably off the pace, abandoning a long-held position as a member of English football's elite. There were still some games which won't fade from the memory, silverware and moments of unadulterated elation. Highs, Lows and Bakayokos explores a period of transformation for one of the game's oldest and grandest clubs; evaluates the causes of Everton's troubles; examines why peers raced away, grasping the opportunities presented by the new Premier League era; and ultimately sets out to rescue and redefine an unfairly maligned decade and its emotional intensity and capacity to thrill that has perhaps been all-too-absent for Evertonians in the recent era of stability.

Aims to describe and explain how organizations like football clubs operate, highlighting the best practices within profit driven corporations, which can be adopted by football clubs to operate in a better manner. What are the dynamics of different leagues and other contexts in which football can learn from business? What can business learn from football? And how can business implement these practices? This volume articulates a basic framework using the differences between football in Sweden and in England. It aims at presenting models which are easily applicable in the working place and defines playing styles on the pitch and thought styles in the board room. The author bases his text on his own experience from many years of teaching and consultancy work.

Written against the backdrop of the 2012 London Olympics, this book examines the idea of 'time' in sport, using time as a conceptual lens to explore movement, bodies, sports reporting, memory, disability, technology and the role of the past and the future in sport.

This book explores how the Olympic industry has shaped hegemonic concepts of sporting masculinities and femininities for its own profit and image-making ends, examining its continuing marginalization of athletes on account of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.

Complexity and Control in Team Sports is the first book to apply complex systems theory to 'soccer-like' team games (including basketball, handball and hockey) and to present a framework for understanding and managing the elite sports team as a multi-level complex system. Conventional organizational studies have tended to define team sports as a set of highly heterogeneous physical, mental and cognitive activities within which it is difficult, if not impossible, to find common behavioural playing regularities or universal pedagogies for controlling those activities. Adopting a whole system approach, and exploring the concepts of control, regulation and self-organization, this book argues that it is possible for coaches, managers and psychologists to develop a better understanding of how a complex system works, and therefore, to more successfully manage and influence a team's performance. This book draws on literature from the biological, behavioural and social sciences, including, psychology, sociology and sports performance analysis, to develop a detailed, interdisciplinary and multi-level picture of the elite sports team. It analyzes behaviour across five inter-connected levels: the team as a 'managed institution'; coaching staff controlling players via cybernetic flows; the team as a playing unit; the individual player as a complex dynamic system expressed through behaviour; and a player's complex physiological/biological system. Drawing these together, the book throws fascinating new light on the elite sports team and will be useful reading for all students, researchers or professionals with an interest in sport psychology, sport management, sport coaching, sport performance analysis or complex systems theory.

This text evaluates the moral project of Olympism, analzying the changing value positions adopted in relation to the ideology of Olympism across the period from the 1890s to the present day. The book also analyzes discourses of Olympism concerned with youth, governance, sport for development and international relations.

This book explores the relationship between diplomatic discourse and the Olympic Movement, charting its continuity and change from an historical perspective. Using the recent body of literature on diplomacy it explores the evolution of diplomatic discourse around a number of themes, in particular the increasing range of stakeholders engaged in the Olympic bid, disability advocacy and the mainstreaming of the Paralympic Games and the evolution of the Olympic boycott. The work addresses the increasing engagement of a number of non-state actors, in particular the IOC and the IPC, as indicative of the diffusion of contemporary diplomacy. At the same time it identifies the state as continuing in the role of primary actor, setting the terms of reference for diplomatic activity beyond the pursuit of its own policy interests. Its historical investigation, based around a UK case study, provides insights into the characteristics of diplomatic discourse relating to the Games, and creates the basis for mapping the future trajectory of diplomacy as it relates to the Olympic Movement.

Aberdeen FC On This Day revisits all the most magical and memorable moments from the Dons' distinguished past, mixing in a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable diary of Reds history - with an entry for every day of the year. From the club's Edwardian formation through to the SPL era, the Pittodrie faithful have witnessed Scottish League, Cup and League Cup triumphs, unforgettable European nights and American summers - all featured here. All-time greats including Willie Miller and Jim Leighton, Joe Harper, Gordon Strachan and Lachlan McMillan(!) all loom larger than life. Revisit 11 April 1970: The Dons claim their second Scottish Cup with a shock 3-1 win over Celtic. 18 November 1931: 'The Great Mystery' betting scandal sees five first-teamers axed. Or 11 May 1983: The European Cup Winners' Cup is won in rainy Gothenburg with a sensational 2-1 victory over Real Madrid.