This month, the Football Scholars’ Forum Summer Series dissects David Goldblatt’s new book, The Age of Football: Soccer and the 21st Century, each week focusing upon a different chapter and region of the world.
I had the honor to serve as moderator for this week’s chapter, “This Storm is What We Call Progress,” on the evolution of European football in the twenty-first century. Thus with glee, I embarked upon David’s chapter to discover that the Euro2016 slogan, “A Rendez-Vous with History,” was the (perhaps snarky) guiding framework. Given that under more normal circumstances we’d be in the midst of Euro2020, it was a thrill to relive parts of that 2016 tournament, held in France amid the increased state of emergency following the terrorist attacks in Paris of November 2015 and January 2016. In addition to the many memorable moments Goldblatt captures, one calls to mind the (largely forgettable) France-Portugal final in which thousands of large Silver Y moths stole the show.
Today’s session fell ten years after France made World Cup history by going on strike in Knysna, South Africa. While going on strike to protest labor conditions is perhaps one of the more French things to do, the government and public did not see it as such, launching weeks of investigations and exposés into what went wrong and then solutions for how to fix it—much like how France’s poor showing at the Rome 1960 Summer Games illustrated the country’s sports crisis, one intertwined with the youth, and which subsequent government investigations and plans to fix the problem ultimately led to the federal youth training centers that David touches on, most emblematic of them all: Clairefontaine.
Everything Has a History, and as Goldblatt argues, the in the postwar era, football has played an ever-more impactful role in European history. In the twenty-first century, it has helped foster a level of interconnectedness below the nation-state, with a focus on cities or urban regions, and in many ways continues to showcase the European project that has driven the European Union in the decades since 1945. At the same time, in most countries, it has become part of politics, whether politicized by politicians themselves or as a path to political power by those in the football world.
Yet, as Goldblatt shows us, European football in the twenty-first century is shaped and impacted by three interlinked crises: the economic, migration, and political ones that have begun to reshape other aspects of public life in much of Europe.
Three key themes stand out to me in this chapter. The first is how these interconnected crises and their intersections with football are reshaping and changing the notion of identity. There is a tension, a push and pull between how European football is reformulating identities. In the Big Five leagues (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France), football has fostered not just a European identity, but rather a more global one as millions of fans around the world have come to identify with certain mega clubs like Arsenal, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, and PSG as their own. This also leads to greater focus on club identity as a global connector. Yet, elsewhere in Europe, professional football has focused on ever-local exclusionary identity. Intertwined in these issues of identity are the evolution of different fan cultures.
The second theme is that of athlete activism. Yes, there’s been a big push amongst the Big Five (and perhaps elsewhere in Europe) by players and clubs to more proactively fight racism in numerous ways—especially in the past several weeks as protests across the globe (originally in solidarity with those protesting the systemic racism, police brutality, and injustice of George Floyd’s death at the hands – or knees—of Minneapolis policemen) gather force. Yet, Goldblatt reminds us that athlete activism can take many forms, and details how athlete and club protests in small countries are helping to move the needle against cronyism and corruption, like in Bosnia.
The third theme is the early flowering of the professional women’s game. I would have loved more on this, especially as there’s ever-more content and context to work with. There remain real hurdles to growing, covering, playing, and analyzing the women’s game. But more media outlets are, belatedly, providing greater coverage outside of world cup years, which helps exposure. Ever-more scholars, led notably by Dr Jean Williams, are uncovering the backstory that’s better illuminating today’s game. And increasingly, more football presidents or directors are investing financial, personnel, and marketing resources into building up their women’s teams. Take the example of Jean Michel Aulas’ OL Féminin, the world’s winningest professional football club; his team’s dominance is being challenged by other big European football presidents, creating a rivalry that—at least pre-Covid19—was helping to more rapidly build professional women’s football…which naturally helps national sides and has a trickle-down impact to the grassroots levels.
I had three questions for Goldblatt to kickoff our discussion:
1. If you were writing this chapter today in a COVID19 world, what, if anything, would you change about it—and why?
2. What was your reasoning for tackling women’s football last in a section that also dealt with activism, and not integrating each national example into each relevant national or regional section?
3. Where, in your view, does European football go from here—and what relation may it have with the destiny of the EU as the European dream and institutions are being eroded by the rise of populism and more?
Here’s some of the other key points in our wide-ranging discussion. Many thanks again to the FSF organizers Drs Peter Alegi and Alex Galzara as well as David Goldblatt and all of our participants.
