Angels of Us All? Football Management, Globalization and the Politics of Celebrity

Abstract

This essay takes a critical look at the football manager as global celebrity. Using two eminent contemporary managers – José Mourinho and Sven‐Goran Eriksson – as case studies, it argues that football managers in the dominant discourses of the game remain the sole means of explaining the outcome of politically and/or commercially important football matches. The structural factors that affect these outcomes are largely denied. This builds on and reiterates arguments previously presented by the author. He further argues that the socially constructed nature of football management is enhanced by the manager’s simultaneous status as celebrity. While appearing to define his own career and expertise, the manager‐celebrity is nevertheless crucially defined not only by the performances of his team but also by the impression management elites whose purpose is to promote or to undermine individual celebrities, according to circumstance.