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This chapter examines the occurrence of the1966 World Cup in England against the cultural mood, or perceptions of the cultural mood, of the mid-1960s. This involves consideration of the stereotype of the ‘swinging ‘60s’ and ‘swinging’ London. While these stereotypes are challenged the period was undeniably one of cultural change and England, certainly London, was regarded as a desirable international destination. The World Cup is examined within the popular culture context of this period and the non-football creativity, directly sponsored by the World Cup as a cultural and commercial occasion, is addressed. In this regard, items including posters, stamps, and the tournament’s mascot, World Cup Willie, are discussed. So too is the official film of the World Cup, Goal! In differing ways each these items offered something distinct, leaving a unique cultural legacy from the 1966 World Cup.

This chapter looks at the encounter between post-war modernity and tradition, by examining the relationship between the World Cup and the English FA Cup. The particular reason for looking at the relationship between the two is to understand how England’s World Cup victory was able to acquire such importance within a national context and football culture in which the World Cup competition had previously struggled to gain significance. The symbolic conferment of prestige upon the World Cup by the monarch, like that historically given to the FA Cup, is a key part of the story. The role of Queen Elizabeth II in the ceremonial aspects of the 1966 World Cup and England’s victory is thus regarded as crucial to the cultural signification process.

This chapter introduces the book, setting out its cultural historical rationale and providing a summary for each of the subsequent chapters. It sets the scene for the discussion of England as World Cup host country and reflects upon the temporal significance of the tournament being held there in the mid-1960s. An initial case is made for modernism as a key theme within the book. This is done via the flagging of England team manager Alf Ramsey as a key figure within the related discussion. Ramsey is identified as a ‘romantic modern’ (borrowing the term from Alexandra Harris). The chapter, written in the first person, reflects briefly upon the author’s biographical relationship to the 1966 World Cup and English football and discusses the use of reference sources used in the book.

Chapter 8 discusses memories of the 1966 World Cup Final. While much discussion in academic work focusses on the theme of collective memory, this chapter concentrates on individual memories. Accordingly, voice is given here to ‘autobiographical memories’ of the 1966 World Cup Final. Given the dearth of primary field-based research, use is made of memory statements provided in the non-academic volume Voices of ’66. The statements raise themes that could be drawn out in a more focussed and substantial oral history research project. The latter half of the chapter switches attention to autobiographical memories of the World Cup Final provided within fictional texts. Here we see rare evidence, allegorical perhaps, of the World Cup Final as a milestone moment in personal lives and as a connecting point in generational relationships.

The case of the 1962 World Cup sheds light on the relationship between the global Cold War and local popular culture in Latin America. Matches between teams from different sides of the Iron Curtain provoked commentaries on life in the Soviet Union and the possible advantages of state-controlled economies. It spoke volumes about the political scenario in Chile rather than in the United States or the Soviet Union. At the same time, football directors navigated Cold War divisions within FIFA to procure their support for Chile’s bid to host the Cup. When hoping to sway the Eastern bloc countries, directors emphasized the vibrant Chilean labor movement and respect for Socialist and Communist parties. This strategy paid off, garnering the vote of both the Soviet Union and the United States. The reluctance of the conservative Chilean government of Jorge Alessandri to invest in the event made it clear that Alessandri had little interest in using the World Cup to promote a political agenda. Nonetheless, the World Cup of 1962 demonstrates how informal actors understood themselves as ambassadors, debated the Cold War, and rendered sport a site of political performance.

Sport and diplomacy have been mutually intertwined in transnational networks of governance and competition—not just on the field of play—and the nongovernmental bodies controlling the sport play an important role within the relationship between soccer and diplomacy. The repeated uses of the game of soccer by so many states across the globe, spanning every continent reveals how integral the sport is to international relations. As soccer has pursued a goal of global engagement to consolidate its position as the world’s preeminent sport in the past century, it has increasingly had to reckon or negotiate with the nation-state. Simultaneously, as state sovereignty has been challenged by the constituent and much-debated forces of globalization, so have longstanding characteristics of soccer’s operation—most notably in a contested relationship between the national, regional, and international level. This introduction addresses those aspects and provides an overview of the book.

As part of his broader efforts to improve Brazil’s position within the international system, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) frequently invoked a rhetoric about national identity that relied heavily on football. These efforts helped Brazil win the right to host the 2014 World Cup, and Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, continued to utilize rhetoric that emphasized a mythical Brazilian identity as well as the valuable legacies for the country from hosting this mega-event. Whereas this language may have helped achieve the diplomatic goals of the Workers’ Party presidents within the international system and FIFA, this rhetoric failed to persuade the domestic population, resulting in widespread protests and significant challenges inside the country. Nonetheless, by evoking rhetorical myth and elevating it within diplomatic endeavors, Presidents Lula and Rousseff used football and the hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup as a form of representation of identity and national policy, projecting a specific image of Brazil abroad to help achieve the goals of expanding and enhancing the country’s status.

This chapter presents the implications of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to the wild religion of South Africa. Christian-composed prayers, interfaith organization events, and collective rituals took on multiple and contested meanings as the Nazareth Baptist Church asserted a legal right to the event as their own sacred horn, and as Tinyiko Maluleke, president of the South African Council of Churches, called it a “missile-shaped weapon” that would awaken the rest of the world to Africa. The chapter further explains why this case is an instance of sacrificial expenditure, incurring spectacular loss in the interest of certifying meaning in a general economy.

This chapter examines the operations of FIFA in the CONCACAF zone. In this regard, it examines three main areas: (i) the use of public or celebrity type diplomacy, courtesy of David Beckham, as part of the English bid to host the 2018 World Cup; (ii) the blurred nature of the distinction between state and non-state actors in the context of Caribbean soccer, given the fact that a former senior vice president of FIFA was also a senior member of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago; and (iii) the implications of this overlap for the workings of the state and the governance of the game. In addition, it is argued that FIFA has practiced a dark form of soccer diplomacy in this area, be it in relation to state or non-state actors, which has been marked by adherence to its “own rules of the game” to the general detriment of the sport.

This concluding chapter to Qatar and the Gulf Crisis examines how the 2022 FIFA World Cup became embroiled in the war of ‘fake’ narratives that characterized the opening weeks and months of the blockade. This occurred as individuals and entities with links to blockading states sought to foment an impression of political risk and instability that would require FIFA to strip the tournament from Qatar or share it among other regional hosts. A related aspect of the impact of the blockade was the widespread pirating of broadcasting rights held by Qatar’s beIN Sports by a Saudi-based entity demonstratively labeling itself BeoutQ. The chapter also explores how Qatari officials pushed back against the criticism and sought to use the World Cup as a catalyst for more systemic changes that have drawn cautious approval from international labor bodies.

This chapter responds to issues surrounding Mega Sports Events (MSE) using a study of the political and international relations dimensions of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Football World Cup. The findings presented confirm the importance of foreign policy in the political ambitions held for the event and provide discussion points concerning the position of Middle Powers within the international community and the policy tools available to them. They also highlight how the value placed on the foreign policy potential of the event, such as the perceived opportunity to demonstrate parity of status with the developed international community, reduced the capacity to pursue or protect domestic policy interests. This notwithstanding, positive outcomes were perceived in a range of areas which suggests that hosting events in developing country contexts may provide valuable opportunities to advance domestic and foreign policy interests if more is known about the true nature of the opportunities presented and how to realise them.

This chapter elaborates on the effects of the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup on Qatar’s restrictive media system, seeking to answer the question: how does the World Cup affect rights of expression and publication in a country that criminalizes, for example, blasphemy and criticism of the emir? Our analysis is based on conversations that we have had with newspaper editors in Qatar, assessing internationally known indices of press freedom and the growing body of academic literature on Qatari sport and media politics. Being home to news broadcaster Al Jazeera, Qatar is the most progressive member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on matters of free expression, but ranks low on international indicators. Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup has brought the country both new attention and criticism, with the latter focusing especially on the kafala labor system. Neither China nor Russia’s media regimes changed after hosting the Olympics in 2008 and 2014 respectively, but despite this trend, this chapter argues that Qatar has been relatively open to its critics, and the award of the World Cup has advanced conversations about sensitive subjects within the country.

This chapter rejects the argument against interpersonal aggregation on the basis of counterexamples and introduces the distinction of formal and substantive aggregation. Section 3.1. introduces T. M. Scanlon’s World Cup Case, which is supposed to show a counterintuitive implication of aggregative principles. Section 3.2, however, argues that counterexamples like the World Cup Case typically rest on some hidden assumptions, and that once these hidden assumptions are made explicit, the force of counterexamples is lost. Furthermore, it points out that criticisms on the basis of counterexamples usually aim at a particular form of interpersonal aggregation, namely substantive aggregation, not the other form, namely formal aggregation. Section 3.3 elucidates the contrast between formal and substantive aggregation. Section 3.4 traces back the idea of formal aggregation to the debate between Amartya Sen and John Harsanyi concerning Harsanyi’s representation theorem.

In 1920, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs created a special section within its propaganda services in the aims of fighting the image of a postwar exhausted France, utilizing soccer within its efforts. This section created a soccer diplomacy and contributed to spreading French influence despite the weakness of French football and French decline in the 1930s. This chapter exposes and explains the contradiction and the paradox of this kind of soccer diplomacy. French diplomats began to understand that soccer matches and competitions were a new and sometimes efficient way to spread propaganda or to analyze the evolution of international relations in the interwar period. Yet, despite the dynamism of the sport and tourism service at its beginning, the government gave little financial help to the French Football Federation, especially when France organized the World Cup in 1938. The French state’s support of football within international relations in the 1930s demonstrates the challenges of soccer diplomacy. Even with the creation of a specific branch of the foreign ministry that focused on sport, international matches and major events such as the 1938 FIFA World Cup reveal the limits of the ambitions of this kind of soccer diplomacy.

When teenage girls Sin Hyo-sun and Sim Mi-sŏn were killed in a suburb of Seoul by a U.S. military vehicle in 2002, it sparked protest that resulted in the first candlelight vigils. This chapter analyzes online discourses surrounding the incident and explores the process through which it became a viral, national issue. The catalyst for the protest was the realization by South Korean youth that U.S. jurisprudence, and not South Korea’s, governed U.S. forces. Korean teenagers – who easily related to the deaths of people their own age – lacked the older generation’s appreciation for U.S. support. As a result, they found both the American jurisdiction and the eventual “not guilty” verdicts unreasonable. In response, Korean youth collectively composed a narrative of a victimized Korea and a yearning for an assertive nation, eventually expanding the vigils into a nationwide nightly event criticizing the fundamental South Korean–U.S. relationship in new political terms.

Mega sporting events, including the 2022 FIFA World Cup, align perfectly with Qatar’s economic agenda, which uses athletics as part of its nation-building ambitions. This chapter journeys through several sports worlds in Doha, where low-wage migrant workers are bused to soccer stadiums for televised games, so that it appears that the stands are filled with ardent fans, and where Kenyan runners are granted temporary Qatari citizenship in order to compete as natives. The government has spent a fortune to erect state-of-the-art facilities, host international sporting events, and send athletes to compete globally. Sports are also a primary platform for modern traditionalism’s motif of female empowerment. Despite these efforts, however, rates of women’s athletic participation remain in the single digits. Interviews with players, coaches, and spectators reveal the social processes underlying these dynamics. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how sportswomen overcome barriers to athletic participation by dynamically engaging with modern traditionalism, aligning their sports-related activities with empowerment, Islam, and family values.

The epilogue focuses on the futebol tradition since the 1940s, examining Brazil’s World Cup history. It discusses Brazilians’ reexamination of the Brazilian style and of ideas about race in the aftermath of the 1950 World Cup. It examines the triumphal years of 1958–1970, when teams which seemed to embody futebol won the tournament three times, but which could not assuage the doubts of the military which ruled Brazil (1964–1985). It examines debates about the teams of 1982 and 1994—the first considered an example of futebol at its best, the latter unpopular because it did not win beautifully. Finally, it considers World Cup 2014, which was advertised as a celebration of futebol by Brazilian organizers. It also helped propel an ongoing protest movement which cast doubt on the value of the futebol tradition, suggesting the tradition’s importance to Brazilians’ conversations about themselves and highlighting the importance of understanding its roots.

Samuel Eto’o has been called a football prodigy, achieving recognition for his football acumen as a teenager. First playing in Spain and later through Europe, including a stint in Russia, Eto’o’s position on the Cameroonian national team, the Indomitable Lions, contributed to his perception by football fans and media. His often challenging personality has also kept him in the discussion of world football, even late in his career.