'Magnificent . . . Goldblatt is the doyen of sports historians and brings to this account his forensic and telling eye for detail'
Mail on Sunday

The epic exploration of society, politics, and economics in the twenty-first century through the prism of football, by the critically acclaimed author of The Ball is Round.

'David Goldblatt is not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been'
Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

In the twenty-first century football is first. First among sports themselves, but it now commands the allegiance, interest and engagement of more people in more places than any other phenomenon. In the three most populous nations on the earth – China, India and the United States where just twenty years ago football existed on the periphery of society – it has now arrived for good. Nations, peoples and neighbourhoods across the globe imagine and invent themselves through playing and following the game.

In The Age of Football, David Goldblatt charts football’s global cultural ascent, its economic transformation and deep politicisation, taking in prison football in Uganda and amputee football in Angola, the role of football fans in the Arab Spring, the footballing presidencies of Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, China’s declared intention to both host and win the World Cup by 2050, and the FIFA corruption scandal.

Following the intersection of the game with money, power and identity, like no previous sports historian, Goldblatt’s sweeping story is remarkable in its scope, breathtaking in its depth of knowledge, and is a brilliantly original perspective of the twenty-first century. It is the account of how football has come to define every facet of our social, economic and cultural lives and at what cost, shaping who we think we are and who we want to be.

'The notion of governance has gained significant currency and has become an inseparable part of sport organisations' strategies and practices. It is also a widely taught subject in academic institutions. This is an original and well-conceptualized book, which provides a comprehensive examination of governance at different levels of analysis. Written by established scholars, the text represents a great reference source and will complement nicely the library of academics and practitioners alike.' - Vassil Girginov, President, European Association for Sport Management (EASM) 'The timeliness of this Research Handbook is underscored by the fact that the topic of sport governance has become extremely relevant and important but also extremely complex in our time.' - Hallgeir Gammelsaeter, Molde Specialized University in Logistics, Norway Recent scandals across the word of sport can be directly related to poor governance. This Research Handbook gathers the state-of-the-art research on sport governance by leading international scholars on various issues across various sports, offering a vital reference point for advancing research. Illustrating different approaches and perspectives such as good governance principles, systemic governance, political governance and network governance, chapters suggest research-informed practical solutions to current problems within sport organisations. Covering sport event governance, business implications, corporate social responsibility for enhancing good governance and extended board management, specific directions for further research are provided for each topic under examination. This is the essential reference for all sport governance researchers. It will also be insightful for sport governing bodies and administrators looking for advice on improving good governance in sport institutions.

'The notion of governance has gained significant currency and has become an inseparable part of sport organisations' strategies and practices. It is also a widely taught subject in academic institutions. This is an original and well-conceptualized book, which provides a comprehensive examination of governance at different levels of analysis. Written by established scholars, the text represents a great reference source and will complement nicely the library of academics and practitioners alike.' - Vassil Girginov, President, European Association for Sport Management (EASM) 'The timeliness of this Research Handbook is underscored by the fact that the topic of sport governance has become extremely relevant and important but also extremely complex in our time.' - Hallgeir Gammelsaeter, Molde Specialized University in Logistics, Norway Recent scandals across the word of sport can be directly related to poor governance. This Research Handbook gathers the state-of-the-art research on sport governance by leading international scholars on various issues across various sports, offering a vital reference point for advancing research. Illustrating different approaches and perspectives such as good governance principles, systemic governance, political governance and network governance, chapters suggest research-informed practical solutions to current problems within sport organisations. Covering sport event governance, business implications, corporate social responsibility for enhancing good governance and extended board management, specific directions for further research are provided for each topic under examination. This is the essential reference for all sport governance researchers. It will also be insightful for sport governing bodies and administrators looking for advice on improving good governance in sport institutions.

Drawing on the expertise of leading academics and practitioners, this Research Handbook provides comprehensive analysis of the EU's involvement in sport. Structured around the key themes used by the EU Commission in the field of sport, namely sport in society, the economic dimension of sport and the organization of sport, this Research Handbook is the definitive assessment of modern EU sports law and policy. The initial contributions explore the origins and sources of EU sports law and policy to provide context, while the remaining chapters address the Commission's key themes. Contributors explore the key cases shaping EU sports law, such as Walrave, Bosman and Meca-Medina, whilst also assessing the key contemporary issues concerning the relationship between sport and the EU. Demonstrating how and why sport can make a difference to the socio-economic well-being of the EU, this Research Handbook will be stimulating reading for sports lawyers and administrators as well as students of sports law, sports policy and sports business, and politicians and civil servants in this sector. Contributors include: J. Anderson, W. Andreff, S. Boyes, A. Cattaneo, J.-L. Chappelet, C. Coors, N. De Marco, M. de Wolff, B. Garcia, J. Kornbeck, S. O'Conaill, L. O'Leary, R. Parrish, N. Partington, K. Pijetlovic, S. Schenk, E. Szyszczak, A. Tsoukala, S. Van den Bogaert, A. Vermeersch, S. Weatherill

This book examines how women athletes were represented in international media coverage during the 2004 Olympic Games. Through feminist theorizing and qualitative textual analysis, the contributors discuss sexualisation, nationalism, success, failure and the [in]visibility of women athletes in newspaper reporting in Asia, Europe and the USA.

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.

This study text has been developed to support ICSA's Level 4 Certificate in Sports Governance and includes a range of navigational, self-testing and illustrative features to help you get the most out of the support materials. The text covers the syllabus for each module and is structured to help in planning a programme of study. Learning outcomes linked to the syllabus are highlighted to help students focus on the examination requirements for the Certificate. The text follows a standard format and includes a range of features to encourage active learning and to help students apply principles and theory to real-life business situations, including: * stop and think scenarios * worked examples * test yourself review questions and answers * glossaries of key terms The text provides an excellent guide for students, but also serves as a useful reference for anyone who needs an accessible and practical introduction to the subject.

Women's football is the fastest growing participation sport in the UK. This book critically explores women's elite football from a sociological perspective, analysing the growth, governance and impact of the FA Women's Super League from its inception onwards.

Over the past decade, European football has seen tremendous changes impacting upon its international framework as well as local traditions and national institutions. Processes of Europeanization in the fields of economy and politics provided the background for transformations of the production and consumption of football on a transnational scale. In the course of such rearrangements, football tournaments like the UEFA Championship or the European Champions League turned into mega-events and media spectacles attracting ever-growing audiences. The experience of participating in these events offers some of the very few occasions for the display and embodiment of identities within a European context. This volume takes the 2008 EUROs hosted by Austria and Switzerland as a case study to analyze the political and cultural significance of the tournament from a multidisciplinary angle. What are the special features and spatial arrangements of a UEFAesque Europe, in comparison to alternative possibilities of a Europe? Situating the sport tournament between interpretations of collective European ritual and European spectacle, the key research question will ask what kind of Europe was represented in the cultural, political and economic manifestations of the 2008 EUROs. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

The commercialization of sport since the 1990s has had a number of consequences. The market forces that have defined commercialization, notably pay-per-view television, whilst initially welcomed as important new sources of revenue, have also had the unanticipated consequences of de-stabilizing many sporting competitions and institutions, undermining the financial future of clubs in their traditional role as key social and cultural institutions. This has been manifested in the paradox of chronic financial loss-making amongst professional sports' clubs in an era of exponential revenue growth, a trend exemplified by the experience of Italy's Series A and the English Premier League - both cases examined in detail in this book. But, at the same time, some traditional sporting organizations have sought with some success, to chart a middle way, retaining traditional sporting movement objectives whilst also embracing a form of commercialism. The Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the supporter-owned FC Barcelona football club, and New Zealand rugby union, offer illustrative examples of such strategies examined in detail. This book explores the background to this clash of commercial and traditional sporting objectives, and debates the consequences for wider sports governance. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

Is it possible for football matches or players to help forge a collective European identity? Pyta and Haverman seek to answer this question through a detailed analysis of how football is remembered across the continent. European Football and Collective Memory is the first book to deal with collective memory of football on a continental scale.

The essence of the Rules of Golf is simple… play the course as you find it and play the ball as it lies. However, given golf is played all over the world where the climate, topography and course conditions vary greatly, there are a myriad of situations that can happen when playing golf and players need to know how to deal with those.

The Official Guide to the Rules of Golf is the Bible of Golf Rules. This edition is fully updated to include amendments that come into play from January 2023.

The first section of the book contains the Rules of Golf with Clarifications, where the Clarifications provide additional explanations and in many cases examples to help the reader understand the more complex scenarios. The second section, titled “Committee Procedures”, contains practical guidance for those involved in running day to day play at golf courses or running competitions at all levels of the game.

World in their Hands recounts the remarkable events that led to a group of friends from south-west London staging the inaugural Women's Rugby World Cup in 1991. The tournament was held just 13 years after teams from University College London and King's contested a match that catalysed the growth of the women's game in the UK, and the organisers overcame myriad obstacles before, during and after the World Cup. Those challenges, which included ingrained misogyny, motherhood, a recession, the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, provide a fitting framing device for a book that celebrates female achievement in the face of adversity. Although ostensibly a story about women's rugby, this is a tale that has rare crossover appeal. It is not only the account of a group of inspirational women who took on the institutional misogyny that existed in rugby clubs across the globe to put on a first ever Women's Rugby World Cup. It is also the compelling and relatable tale of how those women, their peers and others in the generations before them, reshaped the idea of what it means to be a woman, finding acceptance and friendship on boggy rugby pitches. At the time, with the men's game tying itself up in knots about professionalism and apartheid, these women were a breath of fresh air. Three decades on, their achievements deserve to be highlighted to a wider audience.

This book is the first independent exploration of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile's (FIA) institutional history. Virtually unexamined compared with similar institutions like the FIFA and the IOC, the FIA has nevertheless changed from being a small association in 1904 to becoming one of the world's most influential sport governing bodies. Through chronologically organised chapters, this book explains how the FIA manages to link together motorsport circuses like Formula 1 with the automotive industry and societal issues like road safety and environmental sustainability. In an exciting narrative spanning seven decades, it reviews the FIA's organisational turning points, governing controversies, political dramas and sporting tragedies. Considering the FIA to be a unique type of hybrid organisation characterised by what the author calls 'organisational emulsion', this case study contains theoretical innovations relevant to other studies of sport governing bodies. It makes an empirically grounded contribution to the research fields of institutional logics, historical sociology and sport governance.

I am very pleased and proud to write the Foreword to this Book on the occasion of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) having completed its first twenty years of operations. And I warmly congratulate the ASSER International Sports Law Centre and the Editors, Ian Blackshaw, Rob Siekmann and Janwillem Soek - in cooperation with Andrew Gibson, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and Steve Cornelius, University of Johannesburg, South Africa -, on their joint initiative in putting together and publishing this Book. The CAS has come a long way since the idea of establishing it was first mentioned by Juan Antonio Samaranch, the former IOC President. His vision and confidence in its future have been truly vindicated. Since its creation and up to 31 December 2003, 576 cases have been submitted, of which 550 were requests for arbitration and 26 for an advisory opinion. In 2004, there was a sharp rise in the number of cases handled by the CAS and this trend continues apace. Thus, the CAS goes from strength to strength and has a great future, having, in the words of the Swiss Federal Tribunal in its landmark judgement of 27 May 2003, "built up the trust of the sporting world and] . . . now widely recognised . . . as] . . . one of the principal mainstays of organised sport.

The Official History of the Tour de France – fully revised and updated for 2023 – is a celebration of one of the greatest annual sporting events, and the premier competition in world cycling. Through more than 300 photographs, rarely seen documents and items of memorabilia, this book covers more than a century of fascinating stories about the Tour and its iconic yellow jersey. This revised and updated edition includes an authoritative narrative account of each major era, up to and including the thrilling 2022 Tour. There are features on superstar cyclists and memorable moments from each period of the event's rich history, plus a foreword from legendary Tour de France champion Bernard Hinault. This is the definitive illustrated book on the Tour.

Communication and Contradiction in the NCAA: An Unlevel Playing Field is a critical examination of the contradictory nature of the NCAA, and how the inherent contradictions impact the communication activities of its constituents, supporters, and challengers. At the heart of the NCAA is the student-athlete, born out of an idealistic collection of communal values that is often at odds with institutional practices. The rhetorical negotiation of the student-athlete's identity informs and confuses communication practices on a number of levels, from interpersonal interactions to organizational apologia. Because the student-athlete is critical to maintaining the collegiate athletics orientation, the NCAA works overtime in promoting, maintaining, and defending it in the face of public scrutiny. The NCAA and its member institutions, like any organization, are compelled to answer public accusations, often working to defend inconsistent policies to an increasingly hostile audience. In an effort to solidify its power, the NCAA uses public discourse to maintain its position by establishing and enforcing proper codes of conduct for participants, and rationalizing unfair labor practices, athletics budgets, and rising tuition costs designed to boost athletics. In response they often rely on familiar rhetorical and organizational practices, such as branding, mascots, and heroic stories of student-athletes, all of which come with issues of their own. All of these communication phenomena, from interpersonal support-seeking to organizational scapegoating, are informed by the central student-athlete mythos. This puts the NCAA at a contradictory crossroads as they work to reconcile inconsistent practices and messages.

Communication and Contradiction in the NCAA: An Unlevel Playing Field is a critical examination of the contradictory nature of the NCAA, and how the inherent contradictions impact the communication activities of its constituents, supporters, and challengers. At the heart of the NCAA is the student-athlete, born out of an idealistic collection of communal values that is often at odds with institutional practices. The rhetorical negotiation of the student-athlete's identity informs and confuses communication practices on a number of levels, from interpersonal interactions to organizational apologia. Because the student-athlete is critical to maintaining the collegiate athletics orientation, the NCAA works overtime in promoting, maintaining, and defending it in the face of public scrutiny. The NCAA and its member institutions, like any organization, are compelled to answer public accusations, often working to defend inconsistent policies to an increasingly hostile audience. In an effort to solidify its power, the NCAA uses public discourse to maintain its position by establishing and enforcing proper codes of conduct for participants, and rationalizing unfair labor practices, athletics budgets, and rising tuition costs designed to boost athletics. In response they often rely on familiar rhetorical and organizational practices, such as branding, mascots, and heroic stories of student-athletes, all of which come with issues of their own. All of these communication phenomena, from interpersonal support-seeking to organizational scapegoating, are informed by the central student-athlete mythos. This puts the NCAA at a contradictory crossroads as they work to reconcile inconsistent practices and messages.

Since its creation the British Olympic Association (BOA) has been one of the most important institutions in sports governance. In spite of its prominence there has hitherto been no single-volume history of the Association. This scholarly yet accessible study fills that gap, assessing the origins, evolution, strengths and shortcomings of the BOA.

The governance of international sport is dominated by the SINGOs (sporting international non-governmental organisations). The IOC, FIFA, IAAF and the FIA wield global influence, but how exactly do such complex organisations operate? This important book examines the rise of the SINGOs, their structures, organisational behaviour and their power in the context of modern sport and international politics. Written by two world-leading experts, the book sheds new light on the relationship between these SINGOs and the sports which they govern. It provides a close critical analysis of the policies and practices of the most important international sport organisations, from their historical origins to the present day. Using case studies of key events such as the Olympics and the recent FIFA scandals, it examines the central question of how best to understand the significance of these organisations today. Combining historical insight with original research, Understanding International Sport Organisations: Principles, Power and Possibilities is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the politics of sport, the sociology of sport, sport administration, sport business or sport management.

World football is in crisis. The corruption scandal engulfing FIFA is arguably the biggest story in the history of modern sport and a watershed for sport governance. More than a decade ago, John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson laid the foundations for subsequent investigations with the publication of Badfellas, a groundbreaking work of critical sport sociology that exposed the systematic corruption at the heart of world football. It was a book that FIFA and Sepp Blatter tried to ban. Now re-issued to combine the original contents of Badfellas with new chapters covering the current crisis, this book points to the ways in which FIFA's new administration can learn from the Blatter story. The prequel traces the course of Sugden and Tomlinson's game-changing investigation into FIFA, while the sequel updates the FIFA story from 2002 onwards and provides a chronology of crises and scandals within the FIFA narrative. Demonstrating the vital importance of critical investigative methods in sport studies, Football, Corruption and Lies: Revisiting Badfellas, the book FIFA tried to ban is essential reading for anybody looking to understand Blatter's rise and fall.