This book helps fans understand football as the powerful popular culture product it constitutes

Arve Hjelseth
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Let me first state that Guest has written a very good book, although the reader’s benefit will probably depend to some extent on how much he or she is familiar with the issues discussed. The book’s subtitle is thus aimed at A Thinking Fan. When I first took the book in my hands, I thought that it was about how to relate to modern, commercial football if you were skeptical about those developments. For example, whether a thinking fan should boycott the upcoming World Cup in Qatar. But even though the last question is actually touched upon, the project is primarily to highlight how conceptual or theoretical insights can be used to understand football better. Not indiscriminately, but also not over-critical. A thinking fan can be equipped with a set of tools that makes it possible to act self-reflexively: one can indulge in the passion that football can create, without losing sight of its social meanings and its shady sides. It is about understanding football as the powerful popular culture product it constitutes, not about rejecting or embracing it (p. 154).

The book falls somewhere in the intersection of general nonfiction and scholarly literature. It uses, at least mainly, social science perspectives to shed light on a wide range of issues concerning the position of football in most societies. The focal point is primarily the United States, but the author has traveled and lived in highly different parts of the world, and touches on English, Brazilian and Tanzanian football, among others. With some exceptions, the presentation scratches the surface more than it delves into research in the diverse fields that the author touches upon. But this is both natural and probably also necessary: firstly, the book offers a fresh and exciting look at football for an audience unfamiliar with this research, and secondly, it would weaken the overall sweeps over many topics if Guest were to go into detail about each field of research.

Several of the starting points are personal, as when Guest writes about his own euphoria when the U.S. scored in overtime against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup, and through that were promoted from the group stage. Guest also devotes a lot and meritorious space to women’s football, perhaps not so unnaturally, since interest in women’s football has been greater in North America than was the case for a long time in Europe. The book is well told, and the author often argues in an intriguing and convincing way.

An important argument (p. 68) is that much of the talent development work is about developing the best possible players, at the expense of an ambition to develop human resources.

The book is short and relatively easy to read. Eight chapters add up to just over 170 pages, in addition to footnotes/references. However, the eight chapters vary very widely thematically since they deal with topics ranging from football’s supporters to player development models and sport as a tool for peace and development work. As a book project, it is related to Franklin Foer’s Football Explains the World and Kuper/Szymanski’s Soccernomics, perhaps especially to the former. Foer applied the perspective of globalization to examine football, and the book received considerable attention, not least because it was published in a phase where everyone eventually recognized that football was something more than entertainment for a consumer-oriented audience. However, I think Guest’s book is in many ways even more successful.

The first chapter – “Lenses”– presents some of the perspectives, or glasses, through which Guest studies football. Guest appears as a widely versed social scientist. The chapter also leaves room for an interesting reflection on why he prefers the term soccer to football. Intuitively, you’d think it’s self-explanatory, he’s an American. But it turns out it’s not quite that simple.

Chapter 2 is about football fans. Guest is to be commended for highlighting Durkheim’s concept of collective effervescence in order to shed light on the atmosphere created in the stands. The review of social psychology fan research is also good, showing considerable ability to convey important conceptual and empirical insights using simple language. In this chapter, the sociological fan and supporter research is treated more superficially. It is not necessarily a weakness.

Chapter 3 deals with culture in football, with particular emphasis on highlighting the alternation between cultural traits that are common to the vast majority, and traits that are specific to certain cultures. Guest’s point of departure is the distinction between globalization and glocalization as different aspects of globalization processes. Through somewhat more in-depth discussions of how football culture is expressed in England, Brazil, and South Africa, he makes a number of interesting points, for example about the role of stereotypes about Brazilian football affecting what we see and think when we experience it.

Chapter 4, “Players”, is about player development, or a little more generally put, about human development. An important argument (p. 68) is that much of the talent development work is about developing the best possible players, at the expense of an ambition to develop human resources. The chapter begins with an interesting example of how Qatar has worked to create a decent national team, before the author takes a closer look at the talent development models in the Netherlands, Ghana, and Iceland, which represent a technocratic, a romantic and a humanistic approach respectively.

Chapter 5 is titled “Performances”, and deals with, among other things, how best to develop players’ mental skills, including through an interesting discussion of the psychology of penalties, which has been an appreciative field of research for some psychologists. At the end of the chapter, however, more specific sociological perspectives are given more space than in the chapter on fans, by showing that sociological insights can be used to criticize the tendency of our time for social and societal challenges to be interpreted as personal, psychological problems (p. 109). These considerations also illustrate how sociology and psychology can be useful correctives to some of the basic assumptions on which each of the subjects is based.

Chapter 6, “Impacts” — subtitled “Players, Games and the Greater Good”, discusses football players as potential role models. Here I think the book’s project – to use fairly general social science insights to discuss specific questions – works very well. Because we like to attribute a positive role to football in society, we want the players to be role models. Moreover, a psychological mechanism makes it easy for us to believe that athletes who are outstanding in one field also have interesting or praiseworthy qualities in other fields. But of course, it’s not that simple.

Chapter 7 – “Initiatives” – discusses football for development and peace. One of the starting points is the distinction between emotion and reason in this work. Guest describes a number of cases to discuss this. His conclusions are critical, but by no means unambiguously negative. He argues that football must learn from what we know about development work in general, for example when it comes to using objective criteria to assess its usefulness. In general, chapters 6 and 7 are central to what is in many ways the book’s project: to discuss whether and to what extent football can contribute to a better society.

Chapter 8 is titled “Futures” and discusses the possibilities of football, particularly in relation to the points highlighted in chapters 6 and 7. Among other things, Guest presents a very interesting discussion of the expediency of boycotting championships held in countries like Russia and Qatar. He also points to the opportunities that lie in football’s increasing diversity, including the strong growth of women’s football and the importance of supporting the local game in an increasingly global football world. He refers, for example, to how women’s football is characterized by more fair play than men’s football, but naturally also speculates that professionalization will make the difference less obvious. Here, I don’t think we should be too optimistic: When England beat Germany in this summer’s Women’s European Championship, the last ten minutes were spent cynically wasting time.

Readers with an interest in football will benefit greatly from this book, although it is so wide-ranging that some of the chapters will surely captivate more than others. The social science-educated reader may get less in return, but at the same time you get the opportunity to refresh theoretical insights you might have forgotten, and the academic breadth is so great that everyone learns at least something new. It is essentially a successful book, which can be recommended.

Copyright © Arve Hjelseth 2022