Category: Football
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New Book – Against the Elements: The Eruption of Icelandic Football
Against the Elements: The Eruption of Icelandic Football by Football Collective member Matt McGinn is out now. Against the Elements is part travelogue, part thematic investigation into the factors behind the success of men’s and women’s football in Iceland. It is a book about football that strays from music to weightlifting; from five days on…
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JBG? – HOMOPHOBIA, BIPHOBIA AND TRANSPHOBIA IN SPORT SURVEY.
‘message from Lindsay England from Just a BallGame?, Friday’s Football Collection session guest’ Violence, Harassment and repression of LGBT+ people still exists globally. Annually on May17th, IDAHOBIT- International Day Against Homophobia Biphobia and Transphobia is a coordinated International grass roots community date to raise awareness around LGBT+ visibility and inclusion, alongside encouraging society to take…
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Be careful what you wish for: the return of the Premier League juggernaut
By Mark Doidge The Premier League juggernaut has turned on the ignition. The engine is fired up after three months of sitting silent during covid-19. Their media partners will now inundate us with news stories about how the ‘Greatest League in the Universe’ ™ is about to restart and how the general public will be…
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Mapping Irish Football – Still Live!
This is a call for all football historians that may have come across references to Irish women’s football of any code prior to and including 1973. When this project first started in January 2019 it was commonly believed that women’s football governing bodies were established in Ireland from 1973 onwards. However, as there is little…
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Player heights – Can you help us?
by Adrian Bell, University of Reading; James Reade, University of Reading; Richard Steckel, Ohio State University; & John Wilson, University of South Australia Have football players been getting bigger over the years? Do we know enough about it? Do we care? Does it matter? Can you help us? Well, the answer to the first question…
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Paul Widdop announced as the new Chair of The Football Collective
In February 2016 we sat around a table, under glorious Manchester sunshine, talking about the problems friends and colleagues were facing in academia. These included isolation, lack of resources, limited departmental support, increasing demands for teaching and learning, an incessant narrative of publish in high impact journals or perish if you can’t do this. For…
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There are too many football pitches in England
By Andy Carmichael Thanks, nice knowing you, was he on a retainer from a housing developer…I think I should swiftly qualify the title of this article before I am ejected from the Football Collective and henceforth blacklisted from every football discussion held. There are around 40,000 football pitches in England. Of these the FA estimates…
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FBC Sessions: Grassroots football special – Josh Dean, Jim Keoghan, Les Crang, Dave Webber & Sean Hammill
Grassroots football special – Josh Dean, Jim Keoghan, Les Crang, Dave Webber & Sean Hammill
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“There was no consultation, absolutely outrageous, someone just pressed a button and sent an email.” Covid-19 and Grassroots Football, Beckenham Town and beyond
By Les Crang In March 2020, Beckenham Town FC sat top of the Southern Counties East League Premier Division. On 25th March the National League asked the Football Association to close the season, making it null and void. (Non-league football: National League asks Football Association to close season, 2020). Beckenham Town Chairman Paul Faires made…
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Football, players, contracts and COVID-19: The Perspective of an out of contract Professional Female Footballer during the Pandemic.
By Becky Easton Covid19 continues to cause unimaginable and irreparable suffering and damage to lives, families and communities across the globe. The world is a changed place, football and sport are insignificant entities right now, but they continue to be much discussed. Football, certainly in the UK, is a way of life for some, an…
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As football returns in empty stadiums, four graphs show how home advantage disappears
By Carl Singleton, Dominik Schreyer & James Reade Original published here. For millions of football fans, we’ve had nothing but repeats to watch to get our fix in recent months. But starting from May 16, elite European football kicks off, courtesy of the German Bundesliga. But there will be a few differences. Given that there…
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The FBC Sessions: Eleanor Drywoor, Francesca Champ and Beth Clarkson join Alex Culvin
Eleanor Drywoor, Francesca Champ and Beth Clarkson join Alex Culvin for a conversation on the current issues in football and society, including women’s football, equality, recruitment, football law and regulations, labour migration, player contracts, player welfare, football ownership, fan activism and much more! Also read the related commentary in Managing Sport & Leisure: Covid-19: Reflections…
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Forget the Premier League, it’s Grassroots football that we need to preserve!
James Reade and Daniel Parnell We’ve heard a lot about Premier League footballers in the last few weeks, and we’re seeing more and more stories of football clubs and players taking action regarding their earnings at a time when no money is being made by football clubs anywhere (outside Belarus). But the lifeblood of the…
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Football of ethics: COVID-19 and the football community’s response
By Les Crang Rosencrantz: Shouldn’t we be doing something–constructive? Guildenstern: What did you have in mind? … A short, blunt human pyramid…?” ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Having discussed the possible changing nature of football in a previous post, with Christoph, I was interested in how the football community has reacted to…
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Unprecedented, uncharted and unrealistic: UEFA postpones EURO 2020 by 12 months
By Dr Daniel Parnell and Dr Paul Widdop On Tuesday 17th March UEFA announced the postponement of their flagship national team competition, EURO 2020, due to the ongoing and uncertain threat of the COVID-19 virus. The pan-European competition was scheduled for June and July in 2020 and will now be played in the corresponding months…
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It’s a whole new ball game: Thirty Years of the English Premier League
The early 1990’s in the United Kingdom were politically and socially somewhat turbulent years. Prime Minister John Major was reforming the Conservative party after 15 years of Thatcherism, unemployment was rapidly rising, and the Gulf War was a backdrop to the era. Yet, football (soccer) was somewhat nondescript, but this was all about to change,…
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Digital transformation and innovation in football and Fan Fit
By Dr Alex Fenton 2019 has been an interesting year for football clubs and innovation. PwC’s Sports Survey 2019 went with the headline “Sports industry – time to refocus?”. This came from their survey of 580 industry leaders from 49 countries on their growth expectations. 94% of these concluded that innovation was important or very…
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Why is understanding Arsene Wenger sociologically important?
By Gavin Maclean Of all the topics I had thought I would dedicate several months of thought, research and writing when I started at university, I didn’t imagine Arsene Wenger would be one of them. Here I am however, in the process of beginning to produce some output from this passion project – a process…