Description
Book SynopsisA unique people's history of football, providing a global and diverse perspective from its origins to the present day
Trade Review'A fascinating journey through the game's history. While so much of today's attention is on the highest end of the sport- the money and the glory associated with today's biggest stars- football has always been about so much more: a vehicle of expression, of example and of change. A People's History of Football tells the stories of how, why and when.'
-- Shaka Hislop, former footballer, anti-racist educator and broadcaster
'Correia takes us around the world to examine how soccer has produced the kind of political energy that can change minds and even topple governments. But despite his global jaunt into many corners of the soccer world, there is nothing superficial here. This book is about the politics of passion and they sing from every page.'
-- Dave Zirin, Sports Editor, 'The Nation'
'Often we lose sight of the real history of football, the time before the Premier League and state-owned football clubs. There are fans, players and teams that built the game and truly harnessed it as not just a sport but a force for good and a way to build long lasting communities. That history needs to be told, archived and remembered. This is an essential history of the people’s game.'
-- Flo Lloyd-Hughes, freelance sportswriter and broadcaster
'A wide-ranging and well-researched look at how the masses have attempted to protect and reclaim their sport from the classes, all over the world. An essential read for football fans everywhere.'
-- Juliet Jacques, writer, filmmaker and Clapton CFC player
'Soccer fans and players everywhere, in the stands or the pitch, recognize in their chests' pounding the collective heart of a heartless world. With the rise of popularity of the MLS in the United States, America's historically apolitical sports culture has been suddenly ruptured with the protests and tifos of dozens of radical-left fan clubs. A rich and superbly-researched materialist account of how soccer emerged from feudal origins to become the most popular, and most political modern sport.'
-- A.M. Gittlitz, author, 'I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism'
'An enjoyable highlights reel of stories from Barcelona to Brazil that show why football can still legitimately be seen as the people’s game'
-- Houman Barekat, ‘Irish Times’
'Epic ... there is much to learn and enjoy in this book'
-- 'Times Literary Supplement'
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Football grounds, grounds of struggle
Part I: Defend: Working class resistance to the bourgeois order
1. Kicking off: Riotous balls and social control
2. Normalising bodies, shaping minds: The birth of an industrial sport
3. The people's game: Football as a cultural trait of the working class
4. The Munitionnettes: The saga of the first women football players in Britain
5. Class against class: Working-class football in France, an extension of the field of struggle
Part II: Attack: Assault on dictatorships
6. 'A small way of saying "no"': Italy, the USSR, Spain: stadiums under totalitarian regimes
7. Ball at the feet against the iron fist: Football's resistance to Nazi domination
8. 'Corinthian democracy': Football and self-organisation against the Brazilian dictatorship
9. On the front line, Tahrir Square: Ultras Ahlawy fans at the heart of the 2011 revolution in Egypt
Part III: Dribble: Outmanoeuvring colonialism
10. The Algerian Independence Eleven: A liberation struggle in football boots
11. When Palestine occupies the pitch: Football as a political weapon in the hands of the Palestinians
12. Dribbling the ball, a decolonial art: Afro-Brazilian identities and indigenous resistance in football
13. Sending colonialism off: Football and emancipation struggles in sub-Saharan Africa
Part IV: Support: Collective passions and popular cultures
14. 'You'll Never Walk Alone': Hooliganism and subcultures in British stands
15. The twelfth man: The Italian ultras movement: from political militancy to supporter autonomy
16. 'God and the devil': Maradona, between popular passion and fan cult
17. 'We are lovers, not fighters': Istanbul's ultras and Turkish power
Part V: Outflank: Facing the football industry: fight and reinvent
18. Football for footballers!: From May'68 to the fans' revolt
19. Tackling sexism: Women's football against the French sporting patriarchy
20. "Here it's about punk football": Fan-owned clubs in England
21. Play on the left wing: Hamburg’s FC Sankt Pauli or the pirates of the football business
22. Wild balls, balls on the margins: Street football wrong-foots at the institutional game
Postscript to the English edition
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Index
