Suchergebnisse

Résumé Comment comprendre la migration des footballeurs ghanéens et le rôle que jouent les académies de football dans ce processus ? Les académies constituent l'une des composantes des réseaux de migration de jeunes joueurs africains. Paul Darby propose d'en comprendre leur fonctionnement à travers un travail de recherche ethnographique réalisée au Ghana. Lieux de contact avec les marchés internationaux, les académies forment surtout les bases d'un football national plus performant.

The squad rosters of the participating teams at recent editions of the biennial African Cup of Nations reveals that the majority of Africa's elite football players ply their trade in Europe and that this is a trend that is increasing year by year. For example, at the 2000 tournament cohosted by Ghana and Nigeria, just over 50 percent of the players were signed to a European club. For the 2002 competition in Mali, this figure had increased to 66 percent and for the 2004 edition in Tunisia it stood at 67 percent. Although the exodus of Africa's football talent to Europe has accelerated significantly since the early 1990s, it is important to recognize that this process has long historical roots. This article examines the changing patterns in the transit of African footballers to Europe and demonstrates the ways in which these patterns have been underpinned by broader developments within the political economy of world football.

Der Autor untersucht die Rolle Afrikas bei der Besetzung der Spitzenposition im Fußballweltverband FIFA insbesondere bei deren internen Präsidentschaftswahlen 1974, 1998 und 2002. Im Gegensatz zu seiner weltwirtschaftlich und weltpolitisch unbedeutenden Rolle habe Afrika im internationalen Sport und vor allem im Fußball einen beträchtlichen Stellenwert errungen und sei bei der Besetzung von Spitzenfunktionen zunehmend ein einflussreicher Faktor. Das Verhalten der FIFA gegenüber Afrika werde von dessen wachsendem Einfluss mitbestimmt. (DÜI-Kör)

This book analyzes how the Irish aptitude and ebullience for sport has manifested itself abroad in countries with large Irish communities. Tracing how some clung to the traditions of the 'Old Country'; it also considers how involvement in sports enabled émigrés to adapt to new locales.

Annotation

This article addresses the urgent need for critical analysis of the relationships between sport and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals enshrined in the United Nations' global development framework, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Importantly, there has yet to be any substantial academic exploration of the implications of the position accorded to sport as 'an important enabler' of the aims of 2030 Agenda and its broad set of Sustainable Development Goals. In beginning to address this gap, we draw on the concept of policy coherence for two reasons. First, the designation of a specific Target for policy coherence in the 2030 Agenda is recognition of its centrality in working towards Sustainable Development Goals that are considered as 'integrated and indivisible'. Second, the concept of policy coherence is centred on a dualism that enables holistic examination of both synergies through which the contribution of sport to the Sustainable Development Goals can be enhanced as well as incoherencies by which sport may detract from such outcomes. Our analysis progresses through three examples that respectively focus on: the common orientation of the Sport for Development and Peace 'movement' towards education-orientated objectives aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 4; potential synergies between sport participation policies and the Sustainable Development Goal 3 Target for reducing non-communicable diseases; and practices within professional football in relation to several migration-related Sustainable Development Goal Targets. These examples show the relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals across diverse sectors of the sport industry and illustrate complexities within and across countries that make pursuit of comprehensive policy coherence infeasible. Nevertheless, our analyses lead us to encourage both policy makers and researchers to continue to utilise the concept of policy coherence as a valuable lens to identify and consider factors that may enable and constrain various potential contributions of sport to a range of Sustainable Development Goals.

It has become a truism that football provides a revealing window into how various forms of identity are (re)produced. There is a not insubstantial body of academic work which illustrates that football in Northern Ireland has long served as a vehicle for individuals to come together, develop a sense of belonging, share in common bonds of loyalty and articulate both semantic and syntactical forms of identity. This certainly holds true for the country's Ulster unionist population. Indeed, in many ways, the game has been inextricably bound up with the development of unionist politics and identities. As such, football and football clubs in Northern Ireland represent a particularly useful, yet currently under-utilised, lens through which to analyse the development and nature of the identities of the majority population and how these have manifested themselves in civil society at various points in time. Better understanding how these identities are generated and articulated is important in the context of a society emerging from almost four decades of internecine, ethno-sectarian conflict and particularly at a time when sections of the unionist community have grown disaffected at what they consider to be deliberate attempts to dilute and diminish their identity and cultural traditions. This article contributes to and expands on what is barely a fledgling scholarship on sport and Ulster unionism by examining the ways in which unionist and loyalist identities have developed through and coalesced around Glentoran Football Club, one of Northern Ireland's leading domestic teams.

One of the most striking features of the development of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) during the 1990s has been the emergence of a political and economic alliance between the Union des Associations Européennes de Football (UEFA) and the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF). What is remarkable about this state of affairs is that the relationship between the two confederations has traditionally been characterized by acrimony and mistrust. However, the election of the Swede, Lennart Johansson, as Europe's leading football administrator in 1990 has transformed the climate of power relations between African and European football. As well as exploring the nature of the Afro-European coalition and assessing its impact on world football politics, this article examines how and why Johansson came to form the central axis around which this new relationship was brokered. Particular attention is accorded to Johansson's nationality and it is argued that his approach to the governance of world football is underpinned by the broader philosophies that are embodied within his own country's system of political, social, economic and sporting organization, or the `Swedish model' as it has come to be known. The article adopts a qualitative methodology involving in-depth interviews with Johansson as well as key figures within Svenska Fotbollförbundet (Swedish Football Association) and parliamentarians responsible for their respective parties' sports policies. Extensive use is also made of primary archival sources obtained from the Swedish Sports High School (Idrottshögskolan) in Stockholm, the Swedish Sports Confederation (Riksidrottsförbundet) in Farsta and additional primary research sources obtained from FIFA, CAF and UEFA.

The growth of girls' and women's football in Africa, coupled with increased professionalisation in Europe and the United States, has led to rising international migration of African female players. This trend reflects the longer standing culture of independent, transnational migration among African women since the late 1980s and of enlarged possibilities and responsibilities triggered by neoliberal reform across the continent. This article explores how these sporting, cultural and economic transformations have coalesced to influence the aspirations and agency of female youth and young women in Ghana. To do so, we draw on original data from ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, Sweden and Denmark undertaken between 2015 and 2021. Our findings reveal that for ambitious, talented female footballers, transnational football migration is increasingly viewed as a speculative route to improve ones' life chances and negotiate intergenerational responsibilities to family. Significantly, the article also illustrates that in seeking to produce this highly prized form of migration, they must carefully navigate gendered social norms and hierarchies related to 'respectable' career and life trajectories. The conclusion proposes a critical research agenda to explore the interplay between sporting opportunities, migration aspirations and diverse socioeconomic conditions in Africa.

This article analyzes one of the key features of the increased trading in African football labor since the 1990s, the establishment of football "academies" in Africa. The article begins by setting out a broad explanatory framework that articulates the transit of African footballers to Europe and the role of football academies in this process as a form of neocolonial exploitation and impoverishment of the developing world by the developed world. A brief account of the history, geography, economics, and consequences of African football talent migration to Europe follows. The main focus of the article is the construction of a typology of football academies in Africa and an analysis of their role in the export of African football labor. The article concludes by analyzing the key challenges that the growth of football academies has posed for the African game and outlines ways that these challenges might be addressed.