Tag: Torbjörn Andersson

Soccer, a.k.a (association) football is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, and aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Beyond the game: Panathinaikos’ fandom and the political arena by Angeliki- Sofia Bakali & Torbjörn Andersson.

Eugenio Paradiso’s Football, Power, and Politics in Argentina (Routledge) draws on original ethnographic research to consider the role of fans, club officials, politicians, and others in the spread and perpetuation of corruption and violence within football. Torbjörn Andersson appreciates Paradiso’s very readable and suitably long study in which he shows that the organized chaos actually encompasses not only the whole of football but also Argentine politics and society in general.

För drygt 50 år sen bildades Proletären FF av ett gäng unga killar från Göteborg, starkt influerade av vänstertankar, politiska visioner och solidaritet. Nu har drygt 90 medförfattare skrivit klubbens historia. Boken är på ca 400 sidor och innehåller personliga betraktelser, historiska tillbakablickar och omvärldsanalyser, fördelat i ca 150 olika artiklar. Vår recensent är vald med omsorg – Torbjörn Andersson, landets främste fotbollshistoriker – och han kallar boken ”svensk idrotts mest ambitiösa jubileumsbok”.

Mihaly Szerovay and colleagues’ edited collection Football in the Nordic Countries: Practices, Equality and Influence (Routledge) explores football culture, organisation and development in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway. To our reviewer Payam Ansari, the anthology offers a rich, multifaceted exploration of football on national, “glocal”, and global levels, making it a valuable addition to the field of sports sociology and a beacon for future research on football.

Peace and war, or camaraderie and struggle, are keywords for a lot of sports – and for Matti Goksøyr’s long and impressive work as a researcher. He earned his doctorate at the NIH in 1991 and became professor of sports history eight years later. In December 2022 he turned 70, and how better to celebrate that than with a Festschrift. Christian Tolstrup Jensen enjoyed reading Fred og krig: Festskrift til Matti Goksøyr [Peace and war: Festschrift to Matti Goksøyr], edited by Gudmund Skjeldal & Allan Bennich Grønkjær.

Rahul Kumar’s Football and Fascism: The Politics of Popular Culture in Portugal (De Gruyter) explores the political tensions between the nationalization of sports envisaged by the Portuguese “New State” and the integration of national football in a globalized urban popular culture. Torbjörn Andersson’s disappointment at the lack of a deeper analysis of fascism’s relationship to the triumphant Portuguese football of the 1960s does not prevent him from being impressed by Kumar’s study with its rich empirical details.

Peter J. Watson’s Football and Nation Building in Colombia: The Only Thing That Unites Us (Liverpool University Press) explores the pivotal role that football played as part of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ national unity project centered on the peace process with the FARC. Our reviewer Torbjörn Andersson finds that Watson shows the unique part that football has played in Colombian political history; however, he would happily sacrifice the multitude of details about Santos for more in-depth analyses of the nation’s football history.

Soccer, a.k.a (association) football is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, and aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Zlatan Ibrahimović: a monument and a mirror of his times(b> by Roger Johansson, Per-Markku Ristilammi & Helena Tolvhed (open access).