Professional Football In England Research Articles

The European Super League debacle: why regulation of corporate football is essential

ABSTRACT On 18 April 2021, 12 European football clubs collectively issued a letter of intent to form a new European Super League. This attempted coup was strongly opposed across English football. Afterwards, the responsible owner-oligarchs were singled out for special criticism from pundits and supporter organizations alike. What emerged was a focus upon the personal greed and social indifference of those individuals, but what was less forthcoming in the days following was an analysis capable of putting the ‘greed thesis’ into a more effective social, economic, and even historical context. This article strives for a more sociological understanding of the April 18th coup, to understand better the broader social developments in the political economy of English football from which the coup has come into being. This article calls for regulatory reform of professional football in England, to show why such reform is not merely more plausible now but more necessary.

‘If you haven't got the contacts … you have no choice’: A figurational examination of unpaid work in football scouting in men's professional football in England

Association football has been viewed as an industry with considerable lucrative career prospects; however, this has not prevented the use of unpaid staff throughout football in the UK. There has been increasing academic research regarding the professionalisation and commercialisation of football, yet there has been little acknowledgement of the role of those working in football in an unpaid capacity. Therefore, this paper examines the culture of unpaid work in football scouting, by exploring the motivations of 12 unpaid scouts at professional clubs, from a figurational perspective. Our findings suggest that scouts want to work in the industry because of their ‘love of the game’, in a ‘quest for excitement’ in their career. Unpaid work was in the pursuit of experience and contacts, the latter of which was highly valued in the industry. Football clubs are enclosed figurations and the scouts placed importance on developing interdependent social relations to gain entry to the industry, demonstrating how football may be perceived nepotistic. The likelihood of gaining a paid role directly from an unpaid position was low and therefore the decisions to continually accept unpaid work represented the notion of fantasy-laden thinking.

Gambling in professional sport: the enabling role of “regulatory legitimacy”

PurposeThis study aims to explain why organisations remain vulnerable to financial failure despite increasing financial regulation to improve governance. Using a case study of gambling and regulation in professional football in England, it introduces the concept of “regulatory legitimacy” to show how this enables football clubs to gamble.Design/methodology/approachThe study quantifies the extent to which football clubs in the Championship of the English Football League (EFL) adopt a conventionally economically irrational decision to run a loss-making budget in the hope of achieving sporting success. The study postulates criteria for evidence of this form of gambling by overspending on playing talent with data from the clubs’ published financial statements. A pay-off matrix is developed to compare the intended and actual outcomes.FindingsThe research finds that this strategy was both prevalent and the most successful to achieve promotion.Originality/valueThis study makes three contributions. The first is the quantification of the prevalence of this form of gambling. The second is the finding that, despite regulations to limit spending on wages, gambling is rational in the non-economic sense because it is almost a necessary strategy to achieve promotion if the club had not been relegated from the Premier League in the previous season. The third contribution is the development of the concept of “regulatory legitimacy” as a way to understand the process through which regulations are implemented yet are ineffective at curbing financial gambling.

The operational implementation of the English Football League’s voluntary code of coach recruitment and its effectiveness in addressing the underrepresentation of minoritised coaches

ABSTRACT The English Football League’s voluntary code of coach recruitment seemingly represents a step change in the approach of authorities to addressing the continuing underrepresentation of minoritised coaches in men’s professional football in England. Informed by Critical Race Theory, this article draws on qualitative data generated in 29 interviews with minoritised coaches, professional club chief executives and key organizational stakeholders to examine the code’s development, implementation and effectiveness. Findings demonstrate that the implementation of the code appeared largely performative, as an absence of compliance coupled with organizational scepticism resulted in clubs continuing to operate informal recruitment processes. This engendered little meaningful change in increasing the inclusivity of coach recruitment practices and the representation of minoritised coaches in the game. The study demonstrates that more holistic and interventionist organizational approaches to equality, sensitive to the continuing salience of ‘race’, are needed in men’s professional football coaching.

Organization of sports selection in the system of youth and professional english football

The article is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of the organization and conduct of the process of sports selection in youth and professional football in England. The main scientific and methodological approaches of software and system support of the process of sports selection in youth and professional football in England are analysed. The program of the English Football Association "Talent pathway" (in the Ukrainian edition - "Шлях таланту") is presented in detail.
 The essence of this program is that due to participation in the program in special "Regional Talent Camps" and "National Talent Camps" thoughtful and in-depth selection and sports training are young football players aged 7 to 16 years. The program of the English Premier League "Premier League Primary Stars" has been studied. We believe that a certain selective broadcast of the English system of organization and conduct of the process of sports selection and selection in youth and professional football is possible in terms of the model of functioning and improvement of youth football schools and football clubs of Ukraine.
 Scientific and practical approaches to the organization and conduct of educational, training and competitive forms of sports selection and orientation in the age groups "U 10" (children under 10 years) and "U 12" (children under 12 years) are analysed. The system of organization of competitions in age groups "U 14" (teenagers under 14 years) and "U 16" (boys under 16 years) is studied.
 Such a scientific and methodological approach can provide an opportunity to effectively integrate domestic football to the best examples of European and world sport of excellence, which are competitions under the auspices of FIFA and UEFA.

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.

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.

Leeds United and football's super creditors

Before the start of the 2007/8 season, the English Football League imposed a 15‐point ‘sanction’ on Leeds United for a breach of the League's insolvency rules. This article is a case study of the Football League's decision, the central elements of the Football League's insolvency policy, the reasons why the Football League chose to impose the additional ‘sanction’ and the possible implications for professional football in England of not applying the ‘sanction’. A central element of the Football League's insolvency policy is that ‘football debts’ must be settled in full. This has become known as the ‘super creditor rule’. The article traces the conflict between KPMG, the administrators in the Leeds United case, and the tax authorities in the UK, and concludes that that the Football League's insolvency policy is a misuse of UK law in relation to Creditor Voluntary Agreements as the method of English football clubs coming out of administration and continuing to trade.

The education, rights and welfare of young people in professional football in England: some implications of the White Paper on Sport

The central objectives of this paper are: i) to explore some of the implications of three issues that are to be found within the White Paper on Sport, namely, the protection of minors, free movement of players and the education and welfare of young athletes; and ii) to reflect upon the ways in which, and extent to which, the recommendations the European Commission makes in these areas may come to impact on the future welfare and employment and human rights of young people working in professional football Academies and Centres of Excellence (CoE) in England. In this regard, it is argued that, insofar as the Commission retains a commitment to ensuring the free movement of players and abolishing discrimination on the basis of nationality, this may do more to limit, than encourage, the willingness of professional football clubs to develop more young talented English players in their Academies and CoE. It is also suggested that while the White Paper places particular importance on implementing a range of strategies to tackle the abuse of young athletes and to protect the welfare of young people by, amongst other things, enhancing their education and training, in the context of professional football the efficacy of those strategies in bringing about desired change in young people's lives may be significantly constrained by the prevailing subcultures and values that surround the sport.

An Analysis of Home Advantage in the Top Two Spanish Professional Football Leagues

This study examines the effect of the points system on home advantage in the two top Spanish professional football divisions between the 1980-1981 and 2006-2007 seasons. From 1980-81, teams were awarded 2 points for a win. This was increased to 3 points starting in 1995-1996. Lower home advantage was expected with the 3-point system as a consequence of encouraging more attacking play from away teams. The results of an analysis of 20,992 games showed no significant differences in home advantage values between the First Division (66.3% before and 62.1% after the 3-point system) and the Second Division (65.6% before and 59.5% after). Nevertheless, there was a significant decrease in home advantage in both the First and Second Divisions after the introduction of the 3-point system. The results were compared with two similar studies of professional football in England.

Female Fandom: Identity, Sexism, and Men’s Professional Football in England

In this article I consider women’s relationship to football culture, showing how women sometimes downplay their gender identities to reinforce their fan identities. To accomplish this I interviewed 38 female fans at English men’s football (soccer) matches and analyzed their responses to abusive or insulting behavior by male fans. Women used three strategies to respond to sexism and homophobia. First, they expressed disgust at abuse, sometimes redefining fandom to exclude abusers. Second, they downplayed sexism. Their third strategy was to embrace gender stereotypes, arguing that femininity was inconsistent with “authentic” fandom and that abuse was a fundamental part of football. Finally, I suggest that examining nontraditional male fans using a similar framework might yield useful results.

New Labour, racism and ‘new’ football in England

ABSTRACT Bradbury and Williams begin by examining aspects of the genealogy of incidents of fan racism at the Spain v. England international football match in Madrid on 17 November 2004, and the public outcry in Britain that followed. They raise questions about the possible ‘strategic mobilization’ by Spanish fans of apparently racist epithets as a response to the use, by the English football authorities before the match, of prominent anti-racism symbolism. The main body of the article then considers the British public response to Madrid within the context of the Blairite New Labour policy on football racism in England from the late 1990s. It argues that Labour's Football Task Force from 1997 constituted an entirely new direction for sport and government policy in Britain. However, by drawing on the comments of some of the key figures involved, Bradbury and Williams further contend that, both structurally and ideologically, the Task Force was preset to limit its own investigations on the nature and effects of racism, specifically in the English game. Although the Task Force's report, Eliminating Racism in Football, has had some positive effects—for example, on Football Association policy or in stimulating local anti-racist initiatives—its narrow focus and its relatively underdeveloped understanding of the racism problem in professional sport led its members to de-emphasize the significance of forms of institutionalized racism within English football. Research and commentaries on racism in the English game since that report was published in 1998 suggest that problems of racialized exclusion in football remain. Bradbury and Williams conclude that the public outrage in Britain about the incidents in Madrid reflect an over-concentration on silencing public expressions of racism—combating overt, collective fan outbreaks—at the expense of addressing the racialized structures of power that continue to shape access, opportunities and acceptance of ethnic minorities within professional football in England.

Personal home pages as a resource

PurposeTo help determine the extent to which “unique” informational content is available on personal home pages (PHP) on the world wide web (WWW).Design/methodology/approachThe informational content of PHPs is manually compared with the informational content of non‐PHPs in the field of professional football in England. This produces instances of information which is available on the PHPs but not on the non‐PHPs. A search is then carried out to determine whether these pieces of information are available elsewhere on the web.FindingsThere are notable quantities of information which are only available on PHPs. There are also instances where certain information will be available on PHPs before it is available on non‐PHPs. In addition, the degree to which information on PHPs is correct is also likely to be quite high. These facts in conjunction suggest that PHPs as a whole make a notable contribution to the informational content of the WWW.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample data are limited in size and scope.Practical implicationsPHP visibility and utilization may increase.Originality/valueProvides a methodology for informational comparisons of web pages.

Performance, revenue, and cross subsidization in the Football League, 1927‐1994

1 the distribution of revenues in elite professional football in England and Wales during the period 1927-94. It does so at a time of extraordinary financial dynamism, when the economic importance of professional football in England and Wales has never been greater. Annual rates of growth of turnover exceeding 20 per cent in several years during the 1990s have resulted in an aggregate turnover figure of 12387 million being achieved in 1993-4 (the final season covered by this study), and exceeded substantially thereafter. Several football clubs are already listed on the stock market or the alternative investments market, and at the time of writing a number of others are preparing to join them. Football has contributed to significant growth in the turnover of associated sectors including sports and leisurewear, and subscription television. With developments such as the introduction of pay-per-view television now imminent, the prospects for continued growth appear to be great, although difficult to quantify. It is against this highly buoyant financial background that we attempt a timely historical review of the evolution of certain key features of the economic structure of professional football. The total revenue generated by any professional sporting league competition depends upon the amounts of money being obtained through gate revenues and from other sources such as television fees, sponsorship, income from merchandising, plus the income obtained from sales of players to clubs outside the league (for example, overseas). Some of this revenue is generated directly by the clubs themselves and some is raised by the relevant sporting authorities operating on behalf of the individual clubs (for instance, by selling television rights or by negotiating sponsorship deals for the league as a whole). This revenue, together with any monies raised from other sources (perhaps through capital markets, or donations from wealthy benefactors) is available to spend on players' salaries, other costs (including stadium maintenance and development), and purchases of players from outside the league. The distribution of the total revenue among the clubs then depends on two factors: first, on the performance of individual clubs, which

The trainee system in professional football in England and Wales

The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) became operational nationally in September 1983. In May 1990, Youth Training (YT) was introduced to replace YTS. Throughout the economy, substantial numbers of new entrants to the labour market were subsidized by both schemes. In professional football in England and Wales, the former ad hoc system of “apprenticeship” was replaced by a more uniform systemic programme of both “specific” and “general” training, operating under the aegis of the Footballers’ Further Education and Vocational Training Society. Examines data to show how, subsequent to the implementation of the YTS/YT schemes in professional football, the number of registered contract professionals has increased: the ratio of contract professionals to trainees has decreased and the inter‐divisional distribution of apprentices/trainees has changed, with proportionately more trainees than before now registered with clubs in the lower divisions. Additionally, describes the “specific” (i.e. football club‐based) and “general” (i.e. college‐based) components of the training programme.

Whose game is it anyway? The cultural analysis of sport and media consumption

Abstract This article presents work towards a critical sociology and a cultural analysis of sport, developing as the fullest example an interpretation of shifting patterns of power in English professional football, in the context of wider patterns of sports development and participation. The impact of selected work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (at the University of Birmingham, England) is reviewed, and located with regard to some of its major formative influences and more recent critical responses to the work of the Centre. The application of a critical cultural analysis to a phenomenon such as the Olympic Games is outlined, and the methodological strengths of a critical sociology of consumption as a variant of cultural analysis are used to illuminate recent changes in sports and professional football in England

The limitations of economic analysis — the case of professional football

The analysis of sport and leisure is being increasingly conducted from an economic perspective, thereby endangering some of the benefits the field of leisure studies has gained from an interdisciplinary approach. We feel that this problem is reinforced by the introduction of a narrow definition of this economic approach. This article attempts to highlight some of the limitations of an orthodox economic focus on professional football in England, although we feel that the arguments are applicable to a wider range of interests. We would argue that quantifiable solutions to the economic problems of the game often suffer from loose correlations with the evidence since the problems need to be conceived more broadly than the economic formulae allow. The problems facing football cannot be addressed without the proper recognition of the cultural traditions of the sport, within the framework of a broadly defined political economy.

The Uncertainty of Crisis in Professional Football

The field of leisure studies has gained from interdisciplinary approaches to the subject. This trend is now being threatened by the introduction of a narrowly defined economic approach. With this view becoming increasingly pervasive, the authors attempt to highlight some of the limitations of such an approach. By concentrating on professional football in England, the authors hope to demonstrate the difficulties raised by such work in a way which makes the arguments applicable to a wide range of specific interests. Assessing the claims of the research in the area of professional football, it is demonstrated that quantifiable solutions to the economic problems of the game often suffer from loose correlations with the evidence because the problems need to be conceived more broadly than the economic formulae allow.

The future of league football: a critique of the report of the chester committee of enquiry

Professional football in England has been in decline for many years when measured in terms of paying spectators. In response to the growing financial problems of member clubs the Football League invited Sir Norman Chester, Chairman of an earlier investigation in 1968, to analyse the game's problems and recommend solutions including a possible restructuring of the League. The recommendations of the Chester Committee of Enquiry are evaluated from the perspective of the economist, drawing attention to the objectives of football clubs, the structure of costs, the nature of competition and the demand for the product. It is concluded that the recommendations, though in certain respects supportable, are in others flawed by failure to appreciate the economic features of the industry.