Professionalization Of Football Research Articles

Sport Mobility and Circuits of Power: The Dynamics of Football Migration in Africa and the 2010 World Cup

As a result of factors of globalisation and enhanced commercialisation, the migration of football professionals has become a very important facet of world football. West European leagues, where processes of commercialisation have been most robust in recent years, constitute the epicentre of international football migration, with these leagues attracting most of the world's athletic talent. Africa is a primary source for football flows to Western Europe, an aspect which is mostly viewed as exploitative and an extension of neo-imperialist relations between the continent and its former colonial powers. Over the past decade, however, South Africa has emerged as an important alternative destination for many of Africa's departing footballers. This article focuses on the nature and implications of this phenomenon. It explores the ways in which emergent tendencies of Africa to South Africa football movement correspond with or refract from Africa to Europe migration in terms of its underlying dynamics, and considers what possible effects South Africa's hosting of the 2010 football cup could have on an incipient form of sport mobility on the continent.

Between globalization and local ‘Modernity’: The diffusion and modernization of football in Algeria

This article highlights the importance of football in Algeria as a cultural and political vehicle; a) during the colonial period as a mean of resisting western (colonial) hegemony; b) in the postcolonial era as an instrument mobilized by the FLN (National Liberation Front) state for political legitimation, and international representation of the Algerian socialist development project; and c), in the contemporary context, as part of the transition process towards a market economy. The article also discusses the relationship between football, the transition towards a market economy and the development of a multi-party polity that may be regarded as the most significant precursor to the promotion of the professionalization of football in Algeria. The study aims at synthesizing the history of modern sport in Algeria, particularly football, as part of a transformative, ‘glocal’ process which encompasses the response of Algerian society to the imposition of western modernity and other secular and non-secular ideologies (namely, socialism, populism, pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism, pan-Islamism, and western liberalism). This suggests, in line with the argument of Göle, that though modernity may develop transitionally, it does so in locally distinctive forms and thus (professional) sport in the Algerian context will mean something distinct from sport in other national / local contexts

Beyond the Maximum Wage: The Earnings of Football Professionals in England, 1900-39

This article draws on the data held by football clubs and associations alongside newspaper evidence and biographical accounts to provide a detailed analysis of the earnings of footballers in England before the Second World War. It argues that, despite the apparent equalizing effect of the maximum wage rule, there were considerable differentials in pay between the playing élite and the rank-and-file. Benefits, bonuses, international match fees and other indirect forms of income helped to maintain the skew in footballers' earnings which had existed since the legalization of professionalism in 1885. The article concludes by considering the earnings of footballers in England in relation to other countries, other sports and other sectors of the entertainment industry.