Football In England Research Articles

Gender, photography and women’s football in England: the Portsmouth Ladies FC, 1916–1918

ABSTRACTFounded in 1916, the Portsmouth Ladies FC were one of many women’s football teams active during the First World War. Building upon the work of Jean Williams, Patrick Brennan and Ian Nannestad, this article seeks to broaden our knowledge of the development of women’s wartime football. Its principal sources are images held by National Football Museum, the Pompey History Society, along with newly digitised newspapers. This article explores two aspects of the club’s history. Firstly, it presents an overview detailing the team’s origins, playing record, the types of games they played, including games against male teams, and the role of Councillor Tom Langdon in organising and promoting their activities. Secondly, it will explore the significant photographic coverage afforded to the team, in particular by the Portsmouth Evening News photographer Joseph Stephen Cribb. It will be argued that the club’s history helps develop the chronological development of women’s football in World War On. It will also be argued that visual depictions of the team show both an increasing interest in the women’s game, and also the limits and gendered nature of that interest.

Barrette: Le Rugby Féminin in 1920s France

Barrette, although it has been previously overlooked in modern sports histories, rose to prominence in France during the 1920s as a women’s contact sport. The close ties between barrette and rugby football support an argument that barrette was explicitly viewed as women’s rugby, and therefore should have a more prominent position in the history of rugby as well as women’s sports. Exploring the rise and decline of barrette through contemporary newspaper reports exposes the political and social context in which women played rugby during the interwar years in Paris. Supporting, promoting, and participating in a contact sport for women in 1920s France were not simply a leisure choice but arguably a strong political statement. Highlighting the prominent role of Dr Marie Houdré, and engaging with the debate surrounding Alice Milliat’s feminist ideals, exposes the feminist ideal behind barrette. Building on transnational comparisons between barrette in Paris and women’s football in England, the evidence indicates that barrette explicitly challenged gender boundaries. Barrette players and promoters were obliged to carefully negotiate the public perception of their gender troubling sport, which was recorded in both mainstream and feminist newspapers that provide primary source material for this study.

The Artification of Football: A Sociological Reconsideration of the ‘Beautiful Game’

Football is widely referred to as the ‘beautiful game’. This gives the impression that the sport can be aesthetically appreciated by its human observers. However, while many people might acknowledge that some of the physical movements made by top level football players exhibit grace, even beauty, this does not equate to football being accepted as a form of culture comparable to other areas of human activity described collectively as ‘the arts’. While this article takes an interest in philosophical inquiry into the aesthetic possibilities of football, it is primarily concerned with a sociological explanation as to how football has become ‘artified’. In doing so, the article draws upon the concept ‘artification’ as developed by Roberta Shapiro and Nathalie Heinich. The approach is not concerned with definitions of art according to aesthetic criteria or notions of appreciation, but with ‘how and under what circumstances art comes about’. This requires examining football in relation to discernible ‘constituent processes’ of artification. For reasons explained in the article, the contextual focus is on the artification of football in England. Artification is not a closed and finished matter. In that it can be said to have occurred, artification must be balanced against ‘de-artification’ in the form of potentially countervailing tendencies. Such consideration is taken up in the conclusion, via reflection upon the damaging impact of the excesses of commercial organisational control. Overall, artification is advocated as a sociological model that offers insight into the cultural significance of football in contemporary life.

Researching the History of Grassroots Football in England: Sources and Opportunities

Since 1980 there has been an abundance of research into the history of association football in England most of which has focused on the elite professional game and its followers. Recreational football has been relatively neglected, though participant numbers suggest that it constituted — as it still does — a highly significant social and cultural phenomenon. For many thousands in the mid-20th century it was “their most important social activity” (Nicholas Fishwick: English Football and Society 1910 –1950, Manchester, 1989, p. 1). Yet why did so many people play football for small clubs in local leagues, or simply come together for an informal ‘kickabout’ when an opportunity presented itself? The scant historiography on English football at the grassroots suggests that this is a question that sports historians have yet to address systematically. Constructing a satisfactory response involves exploring the archival and newspaper sources already available to historians imaginatively while giving due consideration to the possibilities of previously overlooked autobiographical and literary texts.

Republic of Ireland-born football migrants and university access, 1945–2010

This article assesses the rates of third-level degree obtainment amongst Republic of Ireland-born football migrants who played league football in England in the period from 1945 until 2010. It will illustrate that despite a general widening of access and participation at university level in the Republic of Ireland in the late twentieth century, the number of these footballers who successfully completed degree courses remained small. It will show that some players have taken up third-level education independently and their access routes will be discussed along with influences on their post-playing career decisions. Despite improvements in educational access for young players at British clubs, and the development of university scholarships for aspiring players in Ireland, the Irish government has been slow to provide assistance for football migrants in terms of player and educational welfare. This article traces the evolution of governmental attitudes towards the provision of welfare and education for talented footballers, and illustrates that it was not until the early twenty-first century that these matters began to gain significant attention in the Dáil. However, there is currently no formal structure in place in Ireland to help them prepare for and come to terms with a post-professional career.

Competitive balance in the English Premier League

The paper explores competitive balance in the top tier of English league football during the era of the Premier League. This era is compared with both the preceding twenty-five year period and also with the era before World War I. Using several statistical measures, the analysis shows that the current high levels of competitive imbalance are not new phenomena. An explanation is proffered in terms of unequal resources between clubs which are inherent to the ‘longue durée’ of professional league football in England.

Does it Pay to Bet on Your Favourite to Win? Evidence on Experienced Utility from the 2018 FIFA World Cup Experiment

This paper examined whether people gained significant emotional benefits from not engaging in emotional hedging – betting against the occurrence of desired outcomes. Using the 2018 FIFA World Cup as the setting for a lab-in-the-field experiment, we found substantial reluctance among England supporters to bet against the success of the England football team in the tournament. This decision not to offset a potential loss through hedging did not pay off in people's happiness following an England win. It was, however, associated with a sharp decrease in people's happiness following an England loss. Post-match happiness is relatively more stable among those who chose to hedge or were randomly allocated to hedge. We conclude that people do not hedge enough partly because they tend to overestimate the expected diagnostic cost of betting against their social identity, while underestimate the negative emotional impact from betting on their favourite to win when they did not win.

The archipelagic turn: nationhood, nationalism and early modern studies, 1997–2017

In a memorable scene in the 2001 satire Mike Bassett: England Manager, the historic tensions of the Atlantic archipelago are played for darkly comic effect. The England football team, spying Scotla...

Canada 2015: perceptions and experiences of the organisation and governance of the Women’s World Cup

Just as female fans have been ignored, there has also been a tradition of women’s football in England being equally invisibilized, most obviously in studies and media which purport to present a full history of the game. That includes the way it is treated by the game’s governors. FIFA has a strange ambivalence to its leading female football practitioners. Much of the run-up to the 2015 Women’s World Cup was overshadowed by the decision to play the tournament on artificial pitches rather than grass, and the threats of legal action from a group of high-profile players. However, the tournament was also the biggest ever, with an expanded number of teams, and an additional round-of-16 before the quarter-finals. This paper discusses fans’ perceptions and direct experiences of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, whether in person or by following the tournaments via the media coverage. Based on my original qualitative interview data gathered in Canada during the tournament, it is increasingly clear that there was a significant amount of fan dissatisfaction around the planning and scheduling of the matches and the organisation and publicity of the tournament as a whole, much of it directed at FIFA. Several people suggested that the Women’s World Cup is treated as less important and interesting by the governing body, by the media and the public at large simply because it is a women’s tournament and thus perceived as second-rate.

Do Neurocognitive SCAT3 Baseline Test Scores Differ Between Footballers (Soccer) Living With and Without Disability? A Cross-Sectional Study.

To determine if baseline Sport Concussion Assessment Tool, third Edition (SCAT3) scores differ between athletes with and without disability. Cross-sectional comparison of preseason baseline SCAT3 scores for a range of England international footballers. Team doctors and physiotherapists supporting England football teams recorded players' SCAT 3 baseline tests from August 1, 2013 to July 31, 2014. A convenience sample of 249 England footballers, of whom 185 were players without disability (male: 119; female: 66) and 64 were players with disability (male learning disability: 17; male cerebral palsy: 28; male blind: 10; female deaf: 9). Between-group comparisons of median SCAT3 total and section scores were made using nonparametric Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon ranked-sum test. All footballers with disability scored higher symptom severity scores compared with male players without disability. Male footballers with learning disability demonstrated no significant difference in the total number of symptoms, but recorded significantly lower scores on immediate memory and delayed recall compared with male players without disability. Male blind footballers' scored significantly higher for total concentration and delayed recall, and male footballers with cerebral palsy scored significantly higher on balance testing and immediate memory, when compared with male players without disability. Female footballers with deafness scored significantly higher for total concentration and balance testing than female footballers without disability. This study suggests that significant differences exist between SCAT3 baseline section scores for footballers with and without disability. Concussion consensus guidelines should recognize these differences and produce guidelines that are specific for the growing number of athletes living with disability.

Technical efficiency with multi-output, heterogeneous production: a latent class, distance function model of english football

This study combines the output distance function approach with a latent class model to estimate technical efficiency in English football in the presence of productive heterogeneity within a stochastic frontier analysis framework. The distance function approach allows the researcher to estimate technical efficiency including both on-field and off-field production, which is important in the case of English football where clubs are generally thought to maximize something other than profit. On-field production is measured using total league points, and off-field production is measured using total revenue. The data set consists of 2177 club-level observations on 88 clubs that competed in the four divisions of professional football in England over the 29-season period from 1981/82 to 2009/10. The results show evidence of three separate productivity classes in English football. As might be expected, technical efficiency estimated using the latent class model is, on average, higher than technical efficiency using an alternative method which confines heterogeneity to the intercept coefficient. Specifically, average efficiency for the sample is 87.3 and 93.2% for the random-intercept model and the latent class model respectively.

Myths, truths and pioneers: the early development of association football in The Potteries

Despite a wealth of academic research focusing on the origins and development of association football in Britain during the nineteenth century, academics have failed to reach a consensus regarding the early history of the game with the emergence of contrasting ‘orthodox’ and ‘revisionist’ interpretations. Much of the current research has focused on tackling the subject on a national level and this has resulted in many towns, cities and regions across the country being overlooked when sports historians discuss the origins of modern football. One such region is North Staffordshire, more commonly referred to as The Potteries, which, despite having played a key role in the formation of the Football League, possessing one of the oldest professional football clubs in the country and an early county football association, has never been the subject of an in-depth academic study. Using a range of archival sources this paper provides an overview of the origins and early development of association football across The Potteries from the 1850 to 1870s, emphasizing the influence of Stoke City Football Club and provides a fact based resolution to the debate surrounding the club’s origin and formation. The wider development of the game in The Potteries is also explored, tracing the early informal football activities taking place at fairs, fetes and the wakes holidays to the establishment of a football culture in the 1870s following the formation of organized football clubs and the Staffordshire Football Association. This paper concludes that neither the orthodox nor the revisionist interpretations of the game’s origins can fully explain the region’s football development and that further research into the region is required to understand the significance of The Potteries in relation to the national picture.

Continuity, change and complexity in the performance of masculinity among elite young footballers in England.

Following recent research evidencing that young men are redefining the essential components of what it is to be a man, this paper draws on qualitative interviews with 22 elite-level, English Premier League academy level football (soccer) players to investigate their performances and understandings of masculinity in relation to decreasing homohysteria. Even in this gender-segregated, near-total institution, these working-class, non-educationally aspiring adolescents evidence an attenuated performance of 'maleness' and improved attitudinal disposition toward homosexuality. Congruent with insights developed by inclusive masculinity scholars, respondents maintained emotional closeness and physical tactility with male teammates and friends. These more inclusive attitudes and homosocial behaviours were, however, slightly more conservative than in other recent research. We close by explaining this variation with reference to theoretical apparatus' provided by Goffman and Bourdieu to advance theoretical debates about social class and masculinities.

Chelsea Football Club and the Fight for Professional Football in First World War London

‘The football season of 1914–15 has opened under the shadow of the greatest and most momentous war in the history of the world’, wrote the editor of The Chelsea F.C. Chronicle, in the programme for the first match after war was declared. So far, the story of football in England during the First World War has been addressed only briefly in academic research. This article, however, presents the public debate about the abandonment of professional football from the cultural perspective — and through the war story of the Chelsea Football Club. I discuss the phenomena which I identified in the club's programme — the use of war-euphemism in the discourse about football, and the fight against the calls for the cessation of the league — and argue that that was the way in which the urban community of Chelsea fought against the changes that the Great War had brought to the home-front.

Determinants of Non-Penalty Goals Scored Per Game in Europe's Elite Football Leagues

In order to find the determinants of non-penalty goals scored per match, in association football (soccer), this paper developed a regression model consisting of 8 explanatory variables, based on observations for 98 teams playing in the top tires of club football in England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. The regression model was developed on basis of data for twenty one explanatory variables, including technical and tactical variables, for the 2015-16 football season. The paper used a log-linear regression model in order to remove heteroscedasticity. Shots from penalty box per game, share of shots from goal box in total shots and long pass accuracy were found to have statistically significant positive impact on non-penalty goals scored per game. Share of long passes in total passes and crosses per game have significant negative impact. Additionally a log-linear regression model was run on 35 teams for whom the number of non-penalty goals scored per game were above the mean number of non-penalty goals scored per game. For the teams that scored more than the mean number of non-penalty goals per game, the impact of shots from penalty box, accuracy of corners and success rate with aerial balls were found to be positive and statistically significant.

The under-representation and experiences of elite level minority coaches in professional football in England, France and the Netherlands

This article will examine the previously under-researched area of the under-representation and experiences of elite level minority (male) coaches in (men’s) professional football in Western Europe. More specifically, the article will draw on original interview data with 40 elite level minority coaches in England, France and the Netherlands and identify a series of key constraining factors which have limited the potential for and realization of opportunities for career progression across the transition from playing to coaching in the professional game. In doing so, the article will focus on three main themes identified by interviewees as the most prescient in explaining the ongoing under-representation of minority coaches in the sport: their limited access to and negative experiences of the high level coach education environment; the continued existence of racisms and stereotypes in the professional coaching workplace; and the over-reliance of professional clubs on networks rather than qualifications-based frameworks for coach recruitment. Finally, the article will contextualize these findings from within a critical race theory perspective and will draw clear linkages between patterns of minority coach under-representation, the enactment of processes and practices of institutional racism, and the underlying normative power of hegemonic Whiteness in the sport.

The 1883 F.A. Cup Final: working class representation, professionalism and the development of modern football in England

The 1883 F.A. Cup Final has long been viewed as a seminal event in the rise of professional football and an example of the class/culture conflict thought to characterized later Victorian sport. Recent scholarship has improved understandings of the larger contexts surrounding the match but diminish the importance of the 1883 Final as a catalyst for wider change. Little has been done to reconcile traditional understandings with this new, and more complex, view of the motivations for cultural change within the F.A. Utilizing new perspectives on the traditions and character of English sporting culture more generally, this article seeks to recast the 1883 Final within a post-colonial discourse concerning identity and representation. Through this perspective, traditional interpretations can be reconciled with contemporary understandings and the 1883 Final can be re-imbued with a sociocultural significance that more recent perspectives tend to neglect.

The Public Schools and Organized Football in Britain: Fresh Perspectives on Old Paradigms

Modern football, especially soccer, was the product of a fusion of ideas from both the public schools and wider society. In the period between 1830 and 1859 there were far more football teams outside the public schools than those within it, and while the ideas stemming from public schools were important in terms of the code that was established to regulate the game it was only when they were fused and applied with concepts from the wider society that they gained both effectiveness and popularity. The principal creator of this code was the football club at Sheffield, an organization that was easily the most influential and important in the period prior to 1870.

Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer: A Reply to Tony Collins

This paper seeks to defend one part of what has become known as the ‘revisionist’ account of the historiography of football in nineteenth-century England. In so doing, it responds to the critique by Tony Collins in his article ‘Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer’ between 1840 and 1880, calling into question the reliance in his arguments of what he describes as ‘legal organized games’ as the only measure of a football culture outside of the public schools. His classification of small-sided games of football as an ‘informal leisure practice or folk custom’ is also interrogated and found wanting. Alternatively, further evidence is presented from 1860 of football games played in a variety of forms, usually alongside other sports, and mainly on church, works’ or schools’ outings, at rural fetes, galas and celebrations, or as street or casual football, the latter taking place in meadows, fields, and greens. Importantly, these were predominantly small-sided games and are, arguably, the ones closest to Association football, as it was codified in 1863, and constituted a broad, tenacious, and increasingly visible football culture that existed amongst the general population across mid-century uninfluenced by the public schools and public school boys.

The English Football Association Charter for Quality: the development of junior and youth grassroots football in England

In this article, we provide a practitioner’s account of the work undertaken by the English football association (FA) in the field of junior and youth grassroots football over the past two decades. We cover The FA’s main achievements and challenges in implementing strategies and changes in the delivery and provision of grassroots football. In doing so, we draw upon some of the research The FA has commissioned and undertaken to inform the developments that have been and continue to be made. It is rare for organizations such as The FA to communicate their work and contextualize the challenges and innovations within which this work takes place. As such, we hope this contribution will inform the reader of the past and future innovations that are central to sustaining and developing the grassroots game.