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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.

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 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.

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.

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.

This chapter starts with a recipe for Torta Mundail 78 ('78 World Cup Cake). Doña Petrona not only celebrated the Argentine footballers' victory with the photograph and recipe for this cake in her famous cookbook; she also prepared it live on television with the help of her assistant, Juanita Bordoy. It might not have been something most people would make at home, but it made for good television. This chapter discusses changes Doña Petrona made to her image and cookery icon status during the 1970s. Shifting ideas about domesticity reflected new gender dynamics and also the changing image of Argentine culture more broadly. During the 1980s, she started to lose preeminence with the public as the country became more fractured.

This chapter examines how things were in Haiti six months after the earthquake. In some ways, everything had changed, while in many ways Haiti remained the same. The political class was still apathetic in the face of desperate citizens' needs. Political protests had stopped at the start of the World Cup because people suddenly had more important things to do. Another thing about the conclusion of the World Cup, which saw Argentina fail to reach the finals: the electricity that had been guaranteed during the past month to power the TVs would become irregular again. Everywhere the topic of conversations was the earthquake. Many of the horror stories about the disaster had evolved into dramatic tales, complete with humor. Grassroots organizations met continually to develop their strategies for political change, while demonstrators regularly took to the streets. This chapter concludes by quoting a supporter of Argentina in the World Cup: “We've lost the battle, but we haven't lost the war.”

This chapter investigates some aspects of the speeding-up of sport and sports media in contemporary accelerated culture alongside a generalised rethinking of the sociology of modernity. In a 1990s book of essays entitled Sport and Postmodern Times Brian Pronger coined the term ‘post-sport’ when reviewing the transgression of the body in sport within queer theory. But the term ‘post-sport’ also connotes a more apocalyptic place for sport and sport media: the world, for instance, of ubiquitous illegal betting dominated scandals in international cricket and the corrupt practices of financial incentives for sport media event bids like the World Cup within FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, from the 1990s onwards, and the ‘live’ global sport media coverage of such events.

This chapter traces the increasingly rapid changes to stadia and sporting practices in France during the last half of the twentieth century, while simultaneously connecting those transformations to parallel developments beyond French frontiers. The new Parc des Princes, rebuilt between 1967 and 1972, reflected the ongoing processes of modernisation and urbanisation in France during the first thirty years after the Second World War. But the changes to sport and its spaces evident in the new Parc also constituted another aspect of postwar modernisation across Europe itself, constituted by efforts to reinvent mass spectatorship and to accommodate television broadcasting. The Stade de France’s completion in advance of the 1998 World Cup also showcased the way that the stadium in France was now optimistically envisioned as an anchor for highly-symbolic international sporting competitions that projected positive messages about French national prestige and sporting identity. At the same time, the changes to sport and sporting spaces in France were part of a process of sporting globalisation that reflected the increasingly common values placed on stadia as urban spaces in France and other countries in Europe, North America, Oceania and Asia.

This chapter focuses primarily on press coverage of Scottish fans both in Scotland and in the four countries against whom Scotland played in the recent qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup: Iceland, Macedonia, the Netherlands, and Norway. However it also ranges more widely, in both time and space, in an effort to pin down what (if anything) the ‘Tartan Army’ might actually be, and whether there might, in fact, be more than one of them. It observes that the arrival of Scottish football fans in a foreign city is excellent news for local journalists. It notes that many — though by no means all — dress in an often incongruous variation on Highland dress. It further observes that the fans combine kilts, white socks, Timberland boots, T-shirts, and a wide variety of headgear ranging from tammies, glengarries, often with a feather, or some kind of accoutrement borrowed from opposing fans.