{"id":5043,"date":"2025-05-26T11:50:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T09:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2025-05-26T11:50:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T09:50:52","slug":"this-world-football-day-how-hyperbolic-is-your-adjective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/this-world-football-day-how-hyperbolic-is-your-adjective\/","title":{"rendered":"This World Football Day, how hyperbolic is your adjective?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Australia\u2019s Matildas celebrates scoring against Sweden in an international friendly at AAMI Park on November 12, 2022 in Melbourne. (Shutterstock\/FiledIMAGE)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE 25TH OF MAY, LIKE EVERY\u00a0day of the year, is globally themed. It ranges from the celebratory (Africa Day<\/a>) to the tragic (International Missing Children\u2019s Day<\/a>) to the whimsical (Towel Day<\/a>, in honour of The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em><\/a> author Douglas Adams).<\/p>\n

It is also by a 2024 United Nations resolution<\/a> World Football Day<\/em>, marking the anniversary \u201cof the first international football tournament in history with the representation of all regions as part of the 1924 Summer Olympic Games, held in Paris\u201d. The resolution neglected to recognise that, while all regions were involved, not all genders were. Women, unlike in the \u2018gender equal\u2019<\/a> 2024 Olympics also held in Paris, were not allowed to participate in any contact sport like football, or even in track and field<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, while there has been undoubted \u2013 albeit uneven \u2013 gender equity progress in football, how should we assess the success of World Football Day<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Sport: what\u2019s in a name?<\/h3>\n

In the ever-widening world of sport, there is considerable pressure to make a big descriptor stick. Association football \u2013 its official name, though conventionally called soccer in Australia, the USA and other places where it\u2019s not the dominant football code \u2013 is the world\u2019s largest and most popular sport<\/a>. Like other sports, it often prefers the more universal term \u2018game\u2019. The most positive is \u2018the beautiful game<\/a>\u2019, but the more prosaic \u2013 albeit less subjective \u2013 \u2018world<\/a>\u2019 or \u2018global<\/a>\u2019 game is often used.<\/p>\n

Rugby union football favours the \u2018game they play in heaven<\/a>\u2019. Anointed a \u201chooligan\u2019s game played by gentlemen<\/a>\u201d distinguished from the \u201cgentleman\u2019s game played by hooligans\u201d (association football) in the late 19th<\/sup>-century by a University of Cambridge Chancellor, rugby union\u2019s positioning in the social class hierarchy neatly matches its suitably high ranking in the afterlife.<\/p>\n

Rugby league football seceded<\/a> from union in the early 20th century because, unlike the amateur \u2018toffs\u2019, its proletarian players needed some compensation and even remuneration. It has long preferred to proclaim itself the \u2018working man\u2019s game<\/a>\u2019. The erosion of blue-collar masculinity in Australia weakened that identity<\/a>, as signalled by the establishment in 2018 of the National Women\u2019s Rugby League<\/a>. Australian Rules Football, by contrast, has historically<\/a> handled class and gender in smoother fashion.<\/p>\n

As eminent French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu<\/a> observed, cultural capital<\/a> value varies by sport. Football has long been devalued because of its working-class<\/a> associations. In Australia it was also mocked as alien<\/a> when football-loving migrants from southern Europe arrived in numbers after World War II. The title of footballer Johnny Warren\u2019s book on the subject indelicately reproduced the abusive monikers \u2013 Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fevered pitch<\/h3>\n

Politicians, journalists, business leaders and other prominent people are fond of deploying sports metaphors and symbols<\/a>, and make audacious claims on its behalf. The much-revered Nelson Mandela<\/a> \u2013 from a country where football is the main sport among fellow black South Africans \u2013 is compulsively quoted in declaring that, \u201cSport\u00a0has the power to change the world \u2026 It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does\u201d.<\/p>\n

The recently departed Argentinian Pope Francis<\/a> was also a big supporter of sport, especially football, seeing it as \u201cthe most beautiful game\u201d. Does football plausibly merit such plaudits?<\/p>\n

Self-disclosure: I follow football and stubbornly support my unglamorous hometown club, Plymouth Argyle. Formed in 1886, it is a \u2018roots\u2019 British football club like Wrexham, the Australasia-bound<\/a> team owned by Hollywood celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.<\/p>\n

One unanticipated effect of enforced Covid-19 pandemic home confinement was the embrace by international audiences of streamed documentaries like Welcome to Wrexham<\/em><\/a> and Sunderland \u2018Til I Die<\/em><\/a> (a gift shared with Formula 1: Drive to Survive<\/em><\/a>). Such gritty tales of football romanticised<\/a> the terraced houses and local pubs that most would never know or want to frequent.<\/p>\n

Three decades earlier, Nick Hornby\u2019s novel<\/a> and film<\/a> Fever Pitch, <\/em>about the twin miseries of embattled masculinity and Arsenal Football Club fandom, helped open the path for Wall Street and other U.S. interests<\/a> to invest in the English Premier League and the more modest clubs in the footballing equivalent of the Pound Shop. Australian investors<\/a> have now entered this market.<\/p>\n

This love affair between football and capital(ism)<\/a> demands some critically reflective comment on what lies beneath World Football Day. My aim is not to spoil the party, but to remind us that popular culture as global industry<\/a> is never entirely innocent.<\/p>\n

Global football: a brief retrospective<\/h3>\n

Fashioned out of folk physical culture<\/a>, England\u2019s Football Association (FA) created the rules in 1863 for matches against its home nations. British isolationism and sense of superiority meant that diplomacy specialists France formed the F\u00e9d\u00e9ration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA<\/a>) in 1904 to make regular international games possible. The \u2018home of football\u2019 reluctantly joined in 1906, although the British teams withdrew<\/a> from the first three World Cups after a dispute over broken time payments to amateur players.<\/p>\n

Like virtually all professional sport, football is a European imperial and colonial export. Spain and Portugal were particularly successful at installing the game in South America<\/a>. It helps that football is a simple sport demanding only a ball and some space, be that a favela<\/em> or patch of waste ground.<\/p>\n

FIFA accumulated a greater membership<\/a> than the United Nations, largely because there are more footballing nations than nation-states.<\/p>\n

As noted, football was overwhelmingly run, played and watched by men, and excluded women until as late as the 1970s even in Western liberal democracies<\/a>. But female footballers<\/a> took the initiative, defiantly organising their own \u2018guerrilla\u2019 games, before the authorities relented. This was not just a matter of social progress. The commercial advantages<\/a> of recruiting women as fans, consumers and participants could no longer be denied.<\/p>\n

After many years of struggle, elite women\u2019s football has mutated into global sporting spectacle, as was vividly demonstrated by the success of the 2023 FIFA Women\u2019s World Cup<\/a> hosted by Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. The Matildas is now the most valuable<\/a> national sporting \u2018brand\u2019 in Australia. However, the distance still to be travelled was dramatically illuminated at the tournament\u2019s final in Sydney, when Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales forced a kiss<\/a> on player Jenni Hermoso in an incident that became a global scandal.<\/p>\n

There is still a lot wrong with the football world. A veritable shopping list of criticisms can be cited, including:<\/p>\n