Lionel Messi Barcelona Silver Coin Argentina Shirt Autograph World Cup 2022 Wins

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Seller: lasvegasormonaco ✉️ (3,187) 99.7%, Location: Manchester, Take a look at my other items, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 266721681776 Lionel Messi Barcelona Silver Coin Argentina Shirt Autograph World Cup 2022 Wins. 2010 Spain 1 Netherlands 0. 2006 Italy 1 France 1. 2002 Brazil 2 Germany 0. 1998 France 3 Brazil 0. 1994 Brazil 0 Italy 0. 1982 Italy 3 West Germany 1. 1974 West Germany 2 Netherlands 1. 1970 Brazil 4 Italy 1. Lionel Messi Coin FC Barcelona & Argentina Uncirculated 24Kt Silver Plated Commemoration Coin   It has an image of Messi with his famous goal celebration with his autograph and the Argentina flag The reverse has the FC Barcelona Crest The coin is 40mm in diameter, weighs about  1 oz  comes in a plastic case holder A Beautiful coin and Magnificent Keepsake Souvenir to Mark the Worlds Greatest Footballer In Excellent Condition Sorry about the poor-quality photos. They do not do the coin justice which looks a lot better in real life Would make an Excellent Present or Collectable Keepsake souvenir  of a truly great and remarkable Player I have more Football coins on Ebay so Please... Check out my  other items ! Bid with Confidence please read my 100% Positive feedback from over 1,000 satisfied customer Read how quickly they receive their items - I post all my items within 24 hours of receiving payment I am a UK seller with 10 years of eBay selling experience  International customers are welcome. I have shipped items to over 120 countries International orders may require longer handling time if held up at customs If there is a problem I always give a full refund Returns are accepted If your are unhappy with your item please return it for a full refund. I will pay the return postage costs also Why not treat yourself? I always combine multiple items and send an invoice with discounted postage I leave instant feedback upon receiving yours All payment methods accepted from all countries in all currencies Are you looking for a Interesting conversation piece? A birthday present for the person who has everything? A comical gift to cheer someone up? or a special unique gift just to say thank you? You now know where to look for a bargain! Be sure to add me to your  favourites list !

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I have sold items to coutries such as Afghanistan * Albania * Algeria * American Samoa (US) * Andorra * Angola * Anguilla (GB) * Antigua and Barbuda * Argentina * Armenia * Aruba (NL) * Australia * Austria * Azerbaijan * Bahamas * Bahrain * Bangladesh * Barbados * Belarus * Belgium * Belize * Benin * Bermuda (GB) * Bhutan * Bolivia * Bonaire (NL)  * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Botswana * Bouvet Island (NO) * Brazil * British Indian Ocean Territory (GB) * British Virgin Islands (GB) * Brunei * Bulgaria * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cambodia * Cameroon * Canada * Cape Verde * Cayman Islands (GB) * Central African Republic * Chad * Chile * China * Christmas Island (AU) * Cocos Islands (AU) * Colombia * Comoros * Congo * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Cook Islands (NZ) * Coral Sea Islands Territory (AU) * Costa Rica * Croatia * Cuba * Curaçao (NL)  * Cyprus * Czech Republic * Denmark * Djibouti * Dominica * Dominican Republic * East Timor * Ecuador * Egypt * El Salvador * Equatorial Guinea * 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Tianjin, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Milan, Shenyang, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Belo Horizonte, Khartoum, Riyadh, Singapore, Washington, Detroit, Barcelona,, Houston, Athens, Berlin, Sydney, Atlanta, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Oakland, Montreal, Monterey, Melbourne, Ankara, Recife, Phoenix/Mesa, Durban, Porto Alegre, Dalian, Jeddah, Seattle, Cape Town, San Diego, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Rome, Naples, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tel Aviv, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Manchester, San Juan, Katowice, Tashkent, Fukuoka, Baku, Sumqayit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Sapporo, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Taichung, Warsaw, Denver, Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Dubai, Pretoria, Vancouver, Beirut, Budapest, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Campinas, Harare, Brasilia, Kuwait, Munich, Portland, Brussels, Vienna, San Jose, Damman , Copenhagen, Brisbane, Riverside, San Bernardino, Cincinnati and Accra Lionel Messi, in full Lionel Andrés Messi, also called Leo Messi, (born June 24, 1987, Rosario, Argentina), Argentine-born football (soccer) player who received a record-setting seven Ballon d’Or awards as the world’s top male player (2009–12, 2015, 2019, and 2021). In 2022 he helped Argentina win the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)’s World Cup. Early life Messi started playing football as a boy and in 1995 joined the youth team of Newell’s Old Boys (a Rosario-based top-division football club). Messi’s phenomenal skills garnered the attention of prestigious clubs on both sides of the Atlantic. At age 13 Messi and his family relocated to Barcelona, and he began playing for FC Barcelona’s under-14 team. He scored 21 goals in 14 games for the junior team, and he quickly graduated through the higher-level teams until at age 16 he was given his informal debut with FC Barcelona in a friendly match. Antoine Griezmamm of France kicks the ball during the FIFA 2018 World Cup in the finals match between France and Croatia at Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow, Russia, July 15, 2018. (soccer, football, sports) Britannica Quiz FIFA Men’s World Cup Quiz Club play In the 2004–05 season Messi, then 17, became the youngest official player and goal scorer in the Spanish La Liga (the country’s highest division of football). Though only 5 feet 7 inches (1.7 metres) tall and weighing 148 pounds (67 kg), he was strong, well-balanced, and versatile on the field. Naturally left-footed, quick, and precise in control of the ball, Messi was a keen pass distributor and could readily thread his way through packed defenses. In 2005 he was granted Spanish citizenship, an honour greeted with mixed feelings by the fiercely Catalan supporters of Barcelona. The next year Messi and Barcelona won the Champions League (the European club championship) title. Messi’s play continued to rapidly improve over the years, and by 2008 he was one of the most dominant players in the world, finishing second to Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo in the voting for the 2008 Ballon d’Or. In early 2009 Messi capped off a spectacular 2008–09 season by helping FC Barcelona capture the club’s first “treble” (winning three major European club titles in one season): the team won the La Liga championship, the Copa del Rey (Spain’s major domestic cup), and the Champions League title. He scored 38 goals in 51 matches during that season, and he bested Ronaldo in the balloting for both the Ballon d’Or and FIFA’s world player of the year by a record margin. During the 2009–10 season Messi scored 34 goals in domestic games as Barcelona repeated as La Liga champions. He earned the Golden Shoe award as Europe’s leading scorer, and he received another Ballon d’Or (the award was known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or in 2010–15). Lionel Messi Lionel Messi Messi led Barcelona to La Liga and Champions League titles the following season, which helped him capture an unprecedented third consecutive world player of the year award. In March 2012 he netted his 233rd goal for Barcelona, becoming the club’s all-time leading scorer in La Liga play when only 24 years old. He finished Barcelona’s 2011–12 season (which included another Copa del Rey win) with 73 goals in all competitions, breaking Gerd Müller’s 39-year-old record for single-season goals in a major European football league. His landmark season led to his being named the 2012 world player of the year, which made Messi the first player to win the honour four times. His 46 La Liga goals in 2012–13 led the league, and Barcelona captured another domestic top-division championship that season. In 2014 he set the overall Barcelona goal record when he scored his 370th goal as a member of the team. That same year he also broke the career scoring records for play in both the Champions League (with 72 goals) and La Liga (with 253 goals). Lionel Messi Lionel Messi Messi helped Barcelona capture another treble during the 2014–15 season, leading the team with 43 goals scored over the course of the campaign, which resulted in his fifth world player of the year honour. He scored 41 goals across all competitions for Barcelona in 2015–16, and the club won the La Liga title and the Copa del Rey during that season. Messi topped that with 53 goals for Barcelona in 2016–17, leading the team to another Copa del Rey title. In 2017–18 he scored 45 goals, and Barcelona won the La Liga–Copa del Rey double once again. Messi scored 51 goals across all domestic competitions in 2018–19 as Barcelona won another La Liga championship. In late 2019 he won his sixth career Ballon d’Or and was named FIFA’s best male player of the year. In the 2020–21 season, Barcelona claimed the Copa del Rey title, the seventh of Messi’s career. He became a free agent in 2021, and financial issues—some of which were the result of La Liga rules—largely prevented him from re-signing with Barcelona. He left the club having set a number of records; notably, he was the leading goal scorer in the league’s history (474). Later in 2021 Messi signed with Paris St.-Germain, where he joined superstars Kylian Mbappé and Neymar, and that year he also received another Ballon d’Or. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. International career Despite his dual citizenship and professional success in Spain, Messi’s ties with his homeland remained strong, and he was a key member of various Argentine national teams from 2005. He played on Argentina’s victorious 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship squad, represented the country in the 2006 World Cup, and scored two goals in five matches as Argentina swept to the gold medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Messi helped Argentina reach the 2010 World Cup quarterfinals, where the team was eliminated by Germany for the second consecutive time in World Cup play. At the 2014 World Cup, Messi put on a dazzling display, scoring four goals and almost single-handedly propelling an offense-deficient Argentina team through the group stage and into the knockout rounds, where Argentina then advanced to the World Cup final for the first time in 24 years. Argentina lost that contest 1–0 to Germany, but Messi nevertheless won the Golden Ball award as the tournament’s best player. During the 2016 Copa América Centenario tournament, he netted his 55th international goal to break Gabriel Batistuta’s Argentine scoring record. Argentina after winning the 2022 World Cup Argentina after winning the 2022 World Cup After Argentina was defeated in the Copa final—the team’s third consecutive finals loss in a major tournament—Messi said that he was quitting the national team, but his short-lived “retirement” lasted less than two months before he announced his return to the Argentine team. At the 2018 World Cup, he helped an overmatched Argentine side reach the knockout stage, where they were eliminated by eventual champion France in their first match. After a third-place finish at the 2019 Copa América, Messi led Argentina to victory in the tournament two years later, and he received the Golden Ball award. His success continued at the 2022 World Cup. There he guided Argentina to the finals, where he scored two goals—and made a penalty kick during the shootout—to help defeat France. Messi won the World Cup’s Golden Ball, becoming the first male player to receive that award twice. Other activities and legal issues Off the field, Messi was one of the biggest athletic stars in the world. In addition to earning a football salary that was frequently, with Ronaldo’s, one of the two largest athletes’ salaries in all professional sports, he was an extremely successful product pitchman, notably for the sportswear company Adidas. In 2013 Messi and his father (who handled his son’s finances) were charged with tax fraud and accused of using overseas shell companies to avoid paying €4.2 million in Spanish taxes on endorsement earnings. Despite subsequently paying €5 million to the Spanish state, the pair were nevertheless ordered to stand trial on the charges in 2016. In July of that year, Messi and his father were each given suspended 21-month prison sentences (first-time offenders in Spain are given suspended sentences if the duration is under two years) and were fined €2 million and €1.5 million, respectively. Jack Rollin The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica FC Barcelona Table of Contents     Introduction & Top Questions Fast Facts     Facts & Related Content Read Next     Why Do Some People Call Football “Soccer”? Quizzes     Sports Quiz     Great Moments in Sports Quiz Media     Images More     More Articles On This Topic     Contributors     Article History Home Sports & Recreation Soccer FC Barcelona Spanish football club Also known as: Barça, Fútbol Club Barcelona Written by Fact-checked by Last Updated: Apr 18, 2023 • Article History Xavi Xavi See all media Awards And Honors:     European Championship (2009) European Championship (2006) European Championship (1992)  Date:     1899 - present Headquarters:     Barcelona Areas Of Involvement:     football Related People:     Lionel Messi Neymar Romário Samuel Eto’o Diego Maradona  Recent News Apr. 18, 2023, 3:25 PM ET (AP) Rivalry between Barcelona and Madrid takes turn for worse The days of a healthy rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid are over Apr. 5, 2023, 3:50 PM ET (AP) What next for Messi? A look at the options if he leaves PSG When Lionel Messi was jeered by Paris Saint-Germain fans during last Sunday’s home defeat to Lyon, their relationship looked like it had reached breaking point Top Questions Who founded FC Barcelona? What is the game between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid called? What does the FC stand for in FC Barcelona? Who is FC Barcelona's biggest rival? What is the name of FC Barcelona's home stadium? FC Barcelona, in full Fútbol Club Barcelona, also called Barça, Spanish professional football (soccer) club located in Barcelona. FC Barcelona is renowned for its historically skillful and attractive brand of attacking football that places an emphasis on flowing, open play. The team is part of a wider sports and social club with thousands of members. FC Barcelona was formed in 1899 by businessman Joan Gamper, who advertised for players in a local Barcelona sports magazine. The club’s first trophy was the Copa Macaya (Catalan championship) in 1902, and in 1910 “Barça” won the Copa del Rey (“King’s Cup”)—Spain’s leading national football cup competition—for the first time. In total, Barcelona has won 30 Copas del Rey, more than any other team. Serena Williams poses with the Daphne Akhurst Trophy after winning the Women's Singles final against Venus Williams of the United States on day 13 of the 2017 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on January 28, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (tennis, sports) Britannica Quiz Great Moments in Sports Quiz La Liga, the top Spanish football league, was formed in 1929, and Barcelona captured the title in the league’s inaugural season. The club has won La Liga 26 times and has never been relegated to a lower division. Abroad, Barcelona has won the European Cup Winners’ Cup four times (1979, 1982, 1989, and 1997), the European Cup/Champions League five times (1992, 2006, 2009, 2011, and 2015), and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Super Cup three times (1992, 1997, and 2009). In 2008–09 it won the La Liga championship, the Copa del Rey, and the continental championship (Champions League) to become the first Spanish side to capture this “treble,” a feat it repeated in 2014–15. Barcelona played its home matches from 1922 to 1957 at the Camp de Les Corts. After the increasingly popular club outgrew that facility, a giant new stadium, Camp Nou, was built in the western part of the city and opened in 1957. A stadium-record 120,000 fans watched the 1986 European Cup quarterfinal between Barcelona and Juventus. Coutinho, Philippe Coutinho, Philippe Barcelona’s local adversary is RCD Espanyol, but its biggest rival in Spain is Real Madrid. Games between the two teams are referred to as El Clásico (“The Classic”) and attract major interest throughout Spain, in large part because the two sides symbolize for many the ongoing political and cultural difficulties between Catalonian (Barcelona) and Castilian (Real Madrid) Spain. In addition to a long history of signing some of the football world’s biggest names—including Johan Cruyff in the 1970s, Diego Maradona in 1980s, Luis Figo and Rivaldo in the 1990s, and Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto’o in the 2000s—Barcelona also has developed a number of its own stars, such as Xavi and Argentinian forward Lionel Messi (a football prodigy who at age 24 became the club’s all-time leading goal scorer). Many of the club’s players have contributed to the Spanish national team’s greatest successes, including capturing the 2008 and 2012 European Championships and the 2010 World Cup. In the 2010 World Cup final, for example, 7 of Spain’s 11 starters were from Barça. Clive Gifford football Table of Contents     Introduction Fast Facts     Related Content Read Next     10 Unusual Sports     Why Do Some People Call Football “Soccer”? Media     Images More     Contributors     Article History Home Sports & Recreation Other Sports football Written by Fact-checked by Last Updated: Mar 24, 2023 • Article History 2002 World Cup 2002 World Cup See all media Related Topics:     football American football rugby Australian rules football Gaelic football  football, any of a number of related games, all of which are characterized by two persons or teams attempting to kick, carry, throw, or otherwise propel a ball toward an opponent’s goal. In some of these games, only kicking is allowed; in others, kicking has become less important than other means of propulsion. (Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.) For an explanation of contemporary football sports, see football (soccer); American football; rugby; Australian rules football; and Gaelic football. The impulse to kick a round object has been present as long as humans have been humans. The first game of football was played when two or more people, acting on this impulse, competed in an attempt to kick a round object in one direction rather than in another. Evidence of organized football games in Greece and China goes back more than 2,000 years, but historians have no idea how these games were played. Claims that football of some sort was played throughout the Roman Empire are plausible, but the game of harpastum, often cited in support of these claims, seems to have involved throwing a ball rather than kicking it. Although kicking games were played by the indigenous peoples of North America, they were much less popular than the stickball games that are the origin of the modern game of lacrosse. The folk football games of the 14th and 15th centuries, which were usually played at Shrovetide or Easter, may have had their origins in pagan fertility rites celebrating the return of spring. They were tumultuous affairs. When village competed against village, kicking, throwing, and carrying a wooden or leather ball (or inflated animal bladder) across fields and over streams, through narrow gateways and narrower streets, everyone was involved—men and women, adults and children, rich and poor, laity and clergy. The chaotic contest ended when some particularly robust or skillful villager managed to send the ball through the portal of the opposing village’s parish church. When folk football was confined within a single village, the sides were typically formed of the married versus the unmarried, a division which suggests the game’s origins in fertility ritual. The game was violent. The French version, known as soule, was described by Michel Bouet in Signification du sport (1968) as “a veritable combat for possession of the ball,” in which the participants struggled “like dogs fighting over a bone.” The British version, which has been researched more thoroughly than any other, was, according to Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players (1979) by Eric Dunning and Kenneth Sheard, “a pleasurable form…of excitement akin to that aroused in battle.” Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Not surprisingly, most of the information about medieval folk football is derived from legal documents. Edward II banned the game in 1314, and his royal successors repeated the prohibition in 1349, 1389, 1401, and 1423, all in a vain attempt to deprive their disobedient subjects of their disorderly pleasure. Despite the bans, records of criminal trials continue to refer to lives lost and property destroyed in the course of an annual football game. The most detailed account, however, is Richard Carew’s description of “hurling to goales,” from his Survey of Cornwall (1602). That British folk football did not become appreciably more civilized with the arrival of the Renaissance is suggested by Sir Thomas Elyot’s condemnation in The Governour (1537). He lamented the games “beastely fury, and extreme violence.” Even James I, who defended the legitimacy of traditional English pastimes when they were condemned by the Puritans, sought to discourage his subjects from indulging in folk football. He wrote in Basilikon Doron; or, His Majesties Instructions to His Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince (1603) that the “rough and violent” game was “meeter for mameing than making able the [players] thereof.” In Renaissance Italy the rough-and-tumble sport of folk football became calcio, a game popular among fashionable young aristocrats, who transformed it into a highly formalized and considerably less violent pastime played on bounded rectangular spaces laid out in urban squares such as Florence’s Piazza di Santa Croce. In his Discorso sopra il gioco del calcio fiorentino (1580; “Discourse on the Florentine Game of Calcio”), Giovanni Bardi wrote that the players should be “gentlemen, from eighteen years of age to forty-five, beautiful and vigorous, of gallant bearing and of good report.” They were expected to wear “goodly raiment.” In a contemporary print, uniformed pikemen guard the field and preserve decorum. (In 1909, in a moment of nationalistic fervour, the Federazione Italiana del Football changed its name to the Federazione Italiana Gioco del Calcio.) Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More As an aspect of more or less unbroken local tradition, in towns such as Boulogne-la-Grasse and Ashbourne (Derbyshire), versions of folk football survived in France and Britain until the early 20th century. Although all modern football sports evolved from medieval folk football, they derive more directly from games played in schoolyards rather than village greens or open fields. In 1747, in his “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” Thomas Gray referred to the “flying ball” and the “fearful joy” that it provided the “idle progeny” of England’s elite. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries at Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Winchester, and other public schools, football was played in forms nearly as violent as the medieval version of the game. When the privileged graduates of these schools went on to Oxford and Cambridge, they were reluctant to abandon their “fearful joy.” Since none of them were ready to play by the rules of someone else’s school, the only rational solution was to create new games that incorporated the rules of several schools. The institutional basis for the most widely played of these new games was England’s Football Association (1863). References to “Association football” were soon abbreviated to “soccer.” Graduates of Rugby School, accustomed to rules that permitted carrying and throwing as well as kicking the ball, played their game, rugby, under the aegis of the Rugby Football Union (1871). When Thomas Wentworth Wills (1835–80) combined Rugby’s rules with those from Harrow and Winchester, Australian rules football was born. In the United States, rugby was quickly transformed into gridiron football. (The name came from the white stripes that crossed the field at 10-yard [9.1-metre] intervals.) Although Gaelic football is similar to these other “codes,” that game was institutionalized under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (1884) as a distinctively Irish alternative to the imported English games of soccer and rugby. Allen Guttmann football Table of Contents     Introduction & Top Questions History Football around the world     Play of the game     FIFA men’s World Cup winners     FIFA women’s World Cup winners     UEFA Champions League winners     UEFA Europa League winners     Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup winners Fast Facts     football summary     Facts & Related Content Top Questions     What is football?     What is the origin of football? Read Next     10 Unusual Sports     Olympics: Football (Soccer)     Why Do Some People Call Football “Soccer”? Quizzes     Sports Quiz     “Football” Means “Soccer” in This Quiz     Great Moments in Sports Quiz     Sports Fun Facts Quiz     Association Football Media     Videos     Images More     More Articles On This Topic     Additional Reading     Contributors     Article History Home Sports & Recreation Soccer football soccer Also known as: association football, soccer Written by , , See All Fact-checked by Last Updated: May 5, 2023 • Article History Carlos Alberto Torres Carlos Alberto Torres See all media Key People:     Kylian Mbappé Alex Morgan Megan Rapinoe Lionel Messi Cristiano Ronaldo  Related Topics:     Africa Cup of Nations World Cup Asian Cup European Championship Women’s World Cup  Recent News May. 5, 2023, 9:19 AM ET (AP) Messi and PSG will talk after suspension, Galtier says Lionel Messi and Paris Saint-Germain will have discussions about the Argentine player's immediate future with the club when he returns from suspension, coach Christophe Galtier said Friday May. 4, 2023, 7:09 PM ET (AP) Napoli wins 1st title since Maradona played for the club Napoli has won its first Italian soccer league title since the days when Diego Maradona played for the club Top Questions What is football? What is the origin of football? How many people play football? What is football’s premier tournament? football, also called association football or soccer, game in which two teams of 11 players, using any part of their bodies except their hands and arms, try to maneuver the ball into the opposing team’s goal. Only the goalkeeper is permitted to handle the ball and may do so only within the penalty area surrounding the goal. The team that scores more goals wins. Football is the world’s most popular ball game in numbers of participants and spectators. Simple in its principal rules and essential equipment, the sport can be played almost anywhere, from official football playing fields (pitches) to gymnasiums, streets, school playgrounds, parks, or beaches. Football’s governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), estimated that at the turn of the 21st century there were approximately 250 million football players and over 1.3 billion people “interested” in football; in 2010 a combined television audience of more than 26 billion watched football’s premier tournament, the quadrennial month-long World Cup finals. For a history of the origins of football sport, see football. History The early years Modern football originated in Britain in the 19th century. Since before medieval times, “folk football” games had been played in towns and villages according to local customs and with a minimum of rules. Industrialization and urbanization, which reduced the amount of leisure time and space available to the working class, combined with a history of legal prohibitions against particularly violent and destructive forms of folk football to undermine the game’s status from the early 19th century onward. However, football was taken up as a winter game between residence houses at public (independent) schools such as Winchester, Charterhouse, and Eton. Each school had its own rules; some allowed limited handling of the ball and others did not. The variance in rules made it difficult for public schoolboys entering university to continue playing except with former schoolmates. As early as 1843 an attempt to standardize and codify the rules of play was made at the University of Cambridge, whose students joined most public schools in 1848 in adopting these “Cambridge rules,” which were further spread by Cambridge graduates who formed football clubs. In 1863 a series of meetings involving clubs from metropolitan London and surrounding counties produced the printed rules of football, which prohibited the carrying of the ball. Thus, the “handling” game of rugby remained outside the newly formed Football Association (FA). Indeed, by 1870 all handling of the ball except by the goalkeeper was prohibited by the FA. Volleyball match Britannica Quiz Sports Fun Facts Quiz The new rules were not universally accepted in Britain, however; many clubs retained their own rules, especially in and around Sheffield. Although this northern English city was the home of the first provincial club to join the FA, in 1867 it also gave birth to the Sheffield Football Association, the forerunner of later county associations. Sheffield and London clubs played two matches against each other in 1866, and a year later a match pitting a club from Middlesex against one from Kent and Surrey was played under the revised rules. In 1871 15 FA clubs accepted an invitation to enter a cup competition and to contribute to the purchase of a trophy. By 1877 the associations of Great Britain had agreed upon a uniform code, 43 clubs were in competition, and the London clubs’ initial dominance had diminished. Professionalism The development of modern football was closely tied to processes of industrialization and urbanization in Victorian Britain. Most of the new working-class inhabitants of Britain’s industrial towns and cities gradually lost their old bucolic pastimes, such as badger-baiting, and sought fresh forms of collective leisure. From the 1850s onward, industrial workers were increasingly likely to have Saturday afternoons off work, and so many turned to the new game of football to watch or to play. Key urban institutions such as churches, trade unions, and schools organized working-class boys and men into recreational football teams. Rising adult literacy spurred press coverage of organized sports, while transport systems such as the railways or urban trams enabled players and spectators to travel to football games. Average attendance in England rose from 4,600 in 1888 to 7,900 in 1895, rising to 13,200 in 1905 and reaching 23,100 at the outbreak of World War I. Football’s popularity eroded public interest in other sports, notably cricket. Leading clubs, notably those in Lancashire, started charging admission to spectators as early as the 1870s and so, despite the FA’s amateurism rule, were in a position to pay illicit wages to attract highly skilled working-class players, many of them hailing from Scotland. Working-class players and northern English clubs sought a professional system that would provide, in part, some financial reward to cover their “broken time” (time lost from their other work) and the risk of injury. The FA remained staunchly elitist in sustaining a policy of amateurism that protected upper and upper-middle class influence over the game. The issue of professionalism reached a crisis in England in 1884, when the FA expelled two clubs for using professional players. However, the payment of players had become so commonplace by then that the FA had little option but to sanction the practice a year later, despite initial attempts to restrict professionalism to reimbursements for broken time. The consequence was that northern clubs, with their large supporter bases and capacity to attract better players, came to prominence. As the influence of working-class players rose in football, the upper classes took refuge in other sports, notably cricket and rugby union. Professionalism also sparked further modernization of the game through the establishment of the Football League, which allowed the leading dozen teams from the North and Midlands to compete systematically against each other from 1888 onward. A lower, second division was introduced in 1893, and the total number of teams increased to 28. The Irish and Scots formed leagues in 1890. The Southern League began in 1894 but was absorbed by the Football League in 1920. Yet football did not become a major profit-making business during this period. Professional clubs became limited liability companies primarily to secure land for gradual development of stadium facilities. Most clubs in England were owned and controlled by businessmen but shareholders received very low, if any, dividends; their main reward was an enhanced public status through running the local club. Later national leagues overseas followed the British model, which included league championships, at least one annual cup competition, and a hierarchy of leagues that sent clubs finishing highest in the tables (standings) up to the next higher division (promotion) and clubs at the bottom down to the next lower division (relegation). A league was formed in the Netherlands in 1889, but professionalism arrived only in 1954. Germany completed its first national championship season in 1903, but the Bundesliga, a comprehensive and fully professional national league, did not evolve until 60 years later. In France, where the game was introduced in the 1870s, a professional league did not begin until 1932, shortly after professionalism had been adopted in the South American countries of Argentina and Brazil. International organization By the early 20th century, football had spread across Europe, but it was in need of international organization. A solution was found in 1904, when representatives from the football associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland founded the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). 2002 World Cup 2002 World Cup Although Englishman Daniel Woolfall was elected FIFA president in 1906 and all of the home nations (England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales) were admitted as members by 1911, British football associations were disdainful of the new body. FIFA members accepted British control over the rules of football via the International Board, which had been established by the home nations in 1882. Nevertheless, in 1920 the British associations resigned their FIFA memberships after failing to persuade other members that Germany, Austria, and Hungary should be expelled following World War I. The British associations rejoined FIFA in 1924 but soon after insisted upon a very rigid definition of amateurism, notably for Olympic football. Other nations again failed to follow their lead, and the British resigned once more in 1928, remaining outside FIFA until 1946. When FIFA established the World Cup championship, British insouciance toward the international game continued. Without membership in FIFA, the British national teams were not invited to the first three competitions (1930, 1934, and 1938). For the next competition, held in 1950, FIFA ruled that the two best finishers in the British home nations tournament would qualify for World Cup play; England won, but Scotland (which finished second) chose not to compete for the World Cup. Despite sometimes fractious international relations, football continued to rise in popularity. It made its official Olympic debut at the London Games in 1908, and it has since been played in each of the Summer Games (except for the 1932 Games in Los Angeles). FIFA also grew steadily—especially in the latter half of the 20th century, when it strengthened its standing as the game’s global authority and regulator of competition. Guinea became FIFA’s 100th member in 1961; at the turn of the 21st century, more than 200 nations were registered FIFA members, which is more than the number of countries that belong to the United Nations. Carli Lloyd Carli Lloyd The World Cup finals remain football’s premier tournament, but other important tournaments have emerged under FIFA guidance. Two different tournaments for young players began in 1977 and 1985, and these became, respectively, the World Youth Championship (for those 20 years old and younger) and the Under-17 World Championship. Futsal, the world indoor five-a-side championship, started in 1989. Two years later the first Women’s World Cup was played in China. In 1992 FIFA opened the Olympic football tournament to players aged under 23 years, and four years later the first women’s Olympic football tournament was held. The World Club Championship debuted in Brazil in 2000. The Under-19 Women’s World Championship was inaugurated in 2002. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More FIFA membership is open to all national associations. They must accept FIFA’s authority, observe the laws of football, and possess a suitable football infrastructure (i.e., facilities and internal organization). FIFA statutes require members to form continental confederations. The first of these, the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (commonly known as CONMEBOL), was founded in South America in 1916. In 1954 the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) were established. Africa’s governing body, the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF), was founded in 1957. The Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) followed four years later. The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) appeared in 1966. These confederations may organize their own club, international, and youth tournaments, elect representatives to FIFA’s Executive Committee, and promote football in their specific continents as they see fit. In turn, all football players, agents, leagues, national associations, and confederations must recognize the authority of FIFA’s Arbitration Tribunal for Football, which effectively functions as football’s supreme court in serious disputes. Until the early 1970s, control of FIFA (and thus of world football) was firmly in the hands of northern Europeans. Under the presidencies of the Englishmen Arthur Drewry (1955–61) and Stanley Rous (1961–74), FIFA adopted a rather conservative patrician relationship to the national and continental bodies. It survived on modest income from the World Cup finals, and relatively little was done to promote football in developing countries or to explore the game’s business potential within the West’s postwar economic boom. FIFA’s leadership was more concerned with matters of regulation, such as confirming amateur status for Olympic competition or banning those associated with illegal transfers of players with existing contracts. For example, Colombia (1951–54) and Australia (1960–63) were suspended temporarily from FIFA after permitting clubs to recruit players who had broken contracts elsewhere in the world. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Growing African and Asian membership within FIFA undermined European control. In 1974 Brazilian João Havelange was elected president, gaining large support from developing nations. Under Havelange, FIFA was transformed from an international gentlemen’s club into a global corporation: billion-dollar television deals and partnerships with major transnational corporations were established during the 1980s and ’90s. While some earnings were reinvested through FIFA development projects—primarily in Asia, Africa, and Central America—the biggest political reward for developing countries has been the expansion of the World Cup finals to include more countries from outside Europe and South America. Diego Maradona Diego Maradona Greater professionalization of sports also forced FIFA to intercede in new areas as a governing body and competition regulator. The use of performance-enhancing drugs by teams and individual players had been suspected since at least the 1930s; FIFA introduced drug tests in 1966, and occasionally drug users were uncovered, such as Willie Johnston of Scotland at the 1978 World Cup finals. But FIFA regulations were tightened in the 1980s after the sharp rise in offenses among Olympic athletes, the appearance of new drugs such as the steroid nandrolone, and the use of drugs by stars such as Argentina’s Diego Maradona in 1994. While FIFA has authorized lengthy worldwide bans of players who fail drug tests, discrepancies remain between nations and confederations over the intensity of testing and the legal status of specific drugs. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Sepp Blatter Sepp Blatter As the sport moved into the 21st century, FIFA came under pressure to respond to some of the major consequences of globalization for international football. During the corrupt tenure of Switzerland’s Sepp Blatter as president from 1998 to 2015, the political bargaining and wrangling among world football’s officials gained greater media and public attention. Direct conflicts of interest among football’s various groups have also arisen: players, agents, television networks, competition sponsors, clubs, national bodies, continental associations, and FIFA all have divergent views regarding the staging of football tournaments and the distribution of football’s income. Regulation of player representatives and transfers is also problematic. In UEFA countries, players move freely when not under contract. On other continents, notably Africa and Central and South America, players tend to be tied into long-term contracts with clubs that can control their entire careers. FIFA now requires all agents to be licensed and to pass written examinations held by national associations, but there is little global consistency regarding the control of agent powers. In Europe, agents have played a key role in promoting wage inflation and higher player mobility. In Latin America, players are often partially “owned” by agents who may decide on whether transfers proceed. In parts of Africa, some European agents have been compared to slave traders in the way that they exercise authoritarian control over players and profit hugely from transfer fees to Western leagues with little thought for their clients’ well-being. In this way, the ever-widening inequalities between developed and developing nations are reflected in the uneven growth and variable regulations of world football. Richard C. Giulianotti Jack Rollin Bernard Joy Football around the world Regional traditions Europe England and Scotland had the first leagues, but clubs sprang up in most European nations in the 1890s and 1900s, enabling these nations to found their own leagues. Many Scottish professional players migrated south to join English clubs, introducing English players and audiences to more-advanced ball-playing skills and to the benefits of teamwork and passing. Up to World War II, the British continued to influence football’s development through regular club tours overseas and the Continental coaching careers of former players. Itinerant Scots were particularly prominent in central Europe. The interwar Danubian school of football emerged from the coaching legacies and expertise of John Madden in Prague and Jimmy Hogan in Austria. Before World War II, Italian, Austrian, Swiss, and Hungarian teams emerged as particularly strong challengers to the British. During the 1930s, Italian clubs and the Italian national team recruited high-calibre players from South America (mainly Argentina and Uruguay), often claiming that these rimpatriati were essentially Italian in nationality; the great Argentinians Raimondo Orsi and Enrique Guaita were particularly useful acquisitions. But only after World War II was the preeminence of the home nations (notably England) unquestionably usurped by overseas teams. In 1950 England lost to the United States at the World Cup finals in Brazil. Most devastating were later, crushing losses to Hungary: 6–3 in 1953 at London’s Wembley Stadium, then 7–1 in Budapest a year later. The “Magical Magyars” opened English eyes to the dynamic attacking and tactically advanced football played on the Continent and to the technical superiority of players such as Ferenc Puskás, József Bozsik, and Nándor Hidegkuti. During the 1950s and ’60s, Italian and Spanish clubs were the most active in the recruitment of top foreign players. For example, the Welshman John Charles, known as “the Gentle Giant,” remains a hero for supporters of the Juventus club of Turin, Italy, while the later success of Real Madrid was built largely on the play of Argentinian Alfredo Di Stefano and the Hungarian Puskás. European football has also reflected the wider political, economic, and cultural changes of modern times. Heightened nationalism and xenophobia have pervaded matches, often as a harbinger of future hostilities. During the 1930s, international matches in Europe were often seen as national tests of physical and military capability. In contrast, football’s early post-World War II boom witnessed massive, well-behaved crowds that coincided with Europe’s shift from warfare to rebuilding projects and greater internationalism. More recently, racism became a more prominent feature of football, particularly during the 1970s and early 1980s: many coaches projected negative stereotypes onto Black players; supporters routinely abused nonwhites on and off the fields of play; and football authorities failed to counteract racist incidents at games. In general terms, racism at football reflected wider social problems across western Europe. In postcommunist eastern Europe, economic decline and rising nationalist sentiments have marked football culture too. The tensions that exploded in Yugoslavia’s civil war were foreshadowed during a match in May 1990 between the Serbian side Red Star Belgrade and the Croatian team Dynamo Zagreb when violence involving rival supporters and Serbian riot police spread to the pitch to include players and coaches. Club football reflects the distinctive political and cultural complexities of European regions. In Britain, partisan football has been traditionally associated with the industrial working class, notably in cities such as Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle. In Spain, clubs such as FC Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao are symbols of strong nationalist identity for Catalans and Basques, respectively. In France, many clubs have facilities that are open to the local community and reflect the nation’s corporatist politics in being jointly owned and administered by private investors and local governments. In Italy, clubs such as Fiorentina, Inter Milan, SSC Napoli, and AS Roma embody deep senses of civic and regional pride that predate Italian unification in the 19th century. Serena Williams poses with the Daphne Akhurst Trophy after winning the Women's Singles final against Venus Williams of the United States on day 13 of the 2017 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on January 28, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (tennis, sports) Britannica Quiz Great Moments in Sports Quiz The dominant forces in European national football have been Germany, Italy, and, latterly, France; their national teams have won a total of seven World Cups and six European Championships. Success in club football has been built largely on recruitment of the world’s leading players, notably by Italian and Spanish sides. The European Cup competition for national league champions, first played in 1955, was initially dominated by Real Madrid; other regular winners have been AC Milan, Bayern Munich (Germany), Ajax of Amsterdam, and Liverpool FC (England). The UEFA Cup, first contested as the Fairs Cup in 1955–58, has had a wider pool of entrants and winners. Since the late 1980s, topflight European football has generated increasing financial revenues from higher ticket prices, merchandise sales, sponsorship, advertising, and, in particular, television contracts. The top professionals and largest clubs have been the principal beneficiaries. UEFA has reinvented the European Cup as the Champions League, allowing the wealthiest clubs freer entry and more matches. In the early 1990s, Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman sued the Belgian Football Association, challenging European football’s traditional rule that all transfers of players (including those without contracts) necessitate an agreement between the clubs in question, usually involving a transfer fee. Bosman had been prevented from joining a new club (US Dunkerque) by his old club (RC Liège). In 1995 the European courts upheld Bosman’s complaint, and at a stroke freed uncontracted European players to move between clubs without transfer fees. The bargaining power of players was strengthened greatly, enabling top stars to multiply their earnings with large salaries and signing bonuses. Warnings of the end of European football’s financial boom came when FIFA’s marketing agent, ISL, went bust in 2001; such major media investors in football as the Kirch Gruppe in Germany and ITV Digital in the United Kingdom collapsed a year later. Inevitably, the financial boom had exacerbated inequalities within the game, widening the gap between the top players, the largest clubs, and the wealthiest spectators and their counterparts in lower leagues and the developing world. North and Central America and the Caribbean Football was brought to North America in the 1860s, and by the mid-1880s informal matches had been contested by Canadian and American teams. It soon faced competition from other sports, including variant forms of football. In Canada, Scottish émigrés were particularly prominent in the game’s early development; however, Canadians subsequently turned to ice hockey as their national sport. In the United States, gridiron football emerged early in the 20th century as the most popular sport. But, beyond elite universities and schools, soccer (as the sport is popularly called in the United States) was played widely in some cities with large immigrant populations such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland (Ohio), and St. Louis (Missouri), as well as New York City and Los Angeles after Hispanic migrations. The U.S. Soccer Federation formed in 1913, affiliated with FIFA, and sponsored competitions. Between the world wars, the United States attracted scores of European emigrants who played football for local teams sometimes sponsored by companies. Football in Central America struggled to gain a significant foothold in competition against baseball. In Costa Rica, the football federation founded the national league championship in 1921, but subsequent development in the region was slower, with belated FIFA membership for countries such as El Salvador (1938), Nicaragua (1950), and Honduras (1951). In the Caribbean, football traditionally paled in popularity to cricket in former British colonies. In Jamaica, football was highly popular in urban townships, but it did not capture the imagination of the country until 1998, when the national team—featuring several players who had gained success in Britain and were dubbed the “Reggae Boyz”—qualified for the World Cup finals. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More North American leagues and tournaments saw an infusion of professional players in 1967, beginning with the wholesale importation of foreign teams to represent American cities. The North American Soccer League (NASL) formed a year later and struggled until the New York Cosmos signed the Brazilian superstar Pelé in 1975. Other aging international stars soon followed, and crowds grew to European proportions, but a regular fan base remained elusive, and NASL folded in 1985. An indoor football tournament, founded in 1978, evolved into a league and flourished for a while but collapsed in 1992. In North America football did establish itself as the relatively less-violent alternative to gridiron football and as a more socially inclusive sport for women. It is particularly popular among college and high school students across the United States. After hosting an entertaining World Cup finals in 1994, the United States possessed some 16 million football players nationwide, up to 40 percent of whom were female. In 1996 a new attempt at establishing a professional outdoor league was made. Major League Soccer (MLS) was more modest in ambition than NASL, being originally played in only 10 U.S. cities, with greater emphasis on local players and a relatively tight salary cap. The MLS proved to be the most successful American soccer league, expanding to 20 teams (with two in Canada) by 2016 while also signing a number of lucrative broadcasting deals with American television networks and some star players from European leagues. The United States hosted and won the Women’s World Cup finals in 1999, attracting enthusiastic local support. The success of the MLS and the Women’s World Cup led to the creation of a women’s professional league in 2001. The Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA) began with eight teams and featured the world’s star player, Mia Hamm, but it disbanded in 2003. North American national associations are members of the continental body, CONCACAF, and Mexico is the traditional regional powerhouse. Mexico has won the CONCACAF Gold Cup four times since it was first contested in 1991, and Mexican clubs have dominated the CONCACAF Champions Cup for clubs since it began in 1962. British influence in mining and railroads encouraged the founding of football clubs in Mexico in the late 19th century. A national league was established in 1903. Mexico is exceptional in that its mass preference for football runs counter to the sporting tastes of its North American neighbours. The national league system is the most commercially successful in the region and attracts players from all over the Western Hemisphere. Despite high summer humidity and stadiums at high elevations, Mexico has hosted two of the most memorable World Cup finals, in 1970 and 1986, from which Brazil and Argentina (led by the game’s then greatest players, Pelé and Maradona, respectively) emerged as the respective winners. While the national team has been ranked highly by FIFA, often figuring in the top ten, Mexico initially did not produce the world-class calibre of players expected of such a large football-crazed nation. Hugo Sanchez (at Real Madrid) was the only Mexican player to reach the highest world level in the 20th century, but the 21st saw a number of Mexican standouts excel with top European clubs. Richard C. Giulianotti South America Football first came to South America in the 19th century through the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where European sailors played the game. Members of the British community there formed the first club, the Buenos Aires Football Club (FC), in 1867; about the same time, British railway workers started another club, in the town of Rosario, Argentina. The first Argentinian league championship was played in 1893, but most of the players belonged to the British community, a pattern that continued until the early 20th century. Ronaldinho (Ronaldo de Assis Moreira), star of the Brazilian national football (soccer) team, 2006. Brazil is believed to be the second South American country where the game was established. Charles Miller, a leading player in England, came to Brazil in 1894 and introduced football in São Paulo; that city’s athletic club was the first to take up the sport. In Colombia, British engineers and workers building a railroad near Barranquilla first played football in 1903, and the Barranquilla FBC was founded in 1909. In Uruguay, British railway workers were the first to play, and in 1891 they founded the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club (now the famous Peñarol), which played both cricket and football. In Chile, British sailors initiated play in Valparaíso, establishing the Valparaíso FC in 1889. In Paraguay, Dutchman William Paats introduced the game at a school where he taught physical education, but the country’s first (and still leading) club, Olimpia, was formed by a local man who became enthusiastic after seeing the game in Buenos Aires in 1902. In Bolivia the first footballers were a Chilean and students who had studied in Europe, and in Peru they were expatriate Britons. In Venezuela, British miners are known to have played football in the 1880s. Soon local people across South America began taking up and following the sport in ever greater numbers. Boys, mostly from poorer backgrounds, played from an early age, with passion, on vacant land and streets. Clubs and players gained popularity, and professionalism entered the sport in most countries around the 1930s—although many players had been paid secretly before then by their clubs. The exodus of South American players to European clubs that paid higher salaries began after the 1930 World Cup and has steadily increased. By the late 1930s, football had become a crucial aspect of popular culture in many South American nations; ethnic and national identities were constructed and played out on an increasingly international stage. In South American nations, nonwhite players fought a successful struggle to play at the top level: in Rio de Janeiro, Vasco da Gama was the first club to recruit Black players and promptly stormed to the league championship in 1923, encouraging other clubs to follow suit. In Uruguay, a nation of largely mixed European descent, local players learned both the physical style played by the English and the more refined passing game of the Scots, producing a versatility that helped their national team win two Olympic championships and the World Cup between 1924 and 1930. London More From Britannica London: Football In 1916, South American countries were the first to hold a regular continental championship—later known as the Copa América. In 1960 the South American club championship (Libertadores Cup) was started; it has been played annually by the continent’s leading clubs (with the winner playing the European club champion), and, as a result of its popularity, various other international competitions have also been held between clubs. Domestic league championships are split into two or more tournaments each season with frequent variations in format. Eric Weil Richard C. Giulianotti Africa European sailors, soldiers, traders, engineers, and missionaries brought football with them to Africa in the second half of the 19th century. The first documented match took place in Cape Town in 1862, after which the game spread rapidly throughout the continent, particularly in the British colonies and in societies with vibrant indigenous athletic traditions. During the interwar period, African men in cities and towns, railroad workers, and students organized clubs, associations, and regional competitions. Teams from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia competed in the North African championship, established in 1919, and vied for the North African Cup, introduced in 1930. South of the Sahara, Kenya and Uganda first played for the Gossage Trophy in 1924, and the Darugar Cup was established on the island of Zanzibar. In the mining centre of Élisabethville (now Lubumbashi, Congo) a football league for Africans was begun in 1925. In South Africa the game was very popular by the early 1930s, though it was organized in racially segregated national associations for whites, Africans, Coloureds (persons of mixed race), and Indians. In the colonies of British West Africa, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) launched its first football association in 1922, with Nigeria’s southern capital of Lagos following suit in 1931. Enterprising clubs and leagues developed across French West Africa in the 1930s, especially in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. Moroccan forward Larbi Ben Barek became the first African professional in Europe, playing for Olympique de Marseille and the French national team in 1938. After World War II football in Africa experienced dramatic expansion. Modernizing colonial regimes provided new facilities and created attractive competitions, such as the French West Africa Cup in 1947. The migration of talented Africans to European clubs intensified. Together with his older compatriot Mario Coluña, Mozambican sensation Eusébio, European player of the year in 1965, starred for European champions Benfica of Lisbon and led Portugal to third place in the 1966 World Cup, where he was the tournament’s leading scorer. Algerian stars Rachid Mekhloufi of Saint-Étienne and Mustafa Zitouni of AS Monaco represented France before joining the team of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1958. The FLN eleven, who lost only 4 of 58 matches during the period 1958–62, embodied the close relations between nationalist movements and football in Africa on the eve of decolonization. With colonialism’s hold on Africa slipping away, the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF) was established in February 1957 in Khartoum, Sudan, with the first African Cup of Nations tournament also played at that time. Independent African states encouraged football as a means of forging a national identity and generating international recognition. In the 1960s and early ’70s, African football earned a reputation for a spectacular, attacking style of play. African and European coaches emphasized craft, creativity, and fitness within solid but flexible tactical schemes. Salif Keita (Mali), Laurent Pokou (Côte d’Ivoire), and François M’Pelé (Congo [Brazzaville]) personified the dynamic qualities of football in postcolonial Africa. In the late 1970s, the migration of talented players overseas began hampering domestic leagues. The effects of this player exodus were somewhat tempered by the rise of “scientific football” and defensive, risk-averting tactics, an international trend that saw African players fall out of favour with European clubs. Even so, the integration of Africa and Africans into world football accelerated in the 1980s and ’90s. Cameroon’s national team, known as the Indomitable Lions, was a driving force in this process. After being eliminated without losing a match at the 1982 World Cup in Spain (tied with Italy in its group, Cameroon lost the tiebreaker on the basis of total goals scored), Cameroon reached the quarterfinals at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, thereby catapulting African football into the global spotlight. Nigeria then captured the Olympic gold medal in men’s football at the Summer Games in Atlanta in 1996; in 2000 Cameroon won its first Olympic gold medal in men’s football at the Games in Sydney, Australia. Success also came at youth level as Nigeria (1985) and Ghana (1991 and 1995) claimed under-17 world titles. Moreover, Liberian striker George Weah of Paris St. Germain received the prestigious FIFA World Player of the Year award in 1995. Bulk buying Managing the cost of your grocery shops Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Ghana's Michael Essien heading the ball in a 2006 World Cup match against the United States. In recognition of African football’s success and influence, FIFA awarded Africa five places in the 32-team 1998 World Cup finals. This achievement bears witness to African football’s phenomenal passion, growth, and development. This rich and complex history is made more remarkable by the continent’s struggles to cope with a fragile environment, scarce material resources, political conflicts, and the unpleasant legacy of imperialism. Peter Christopher Alegi Asia and Oceania Football quickly entered Asia and Oceania in the latter half of the 19th century, but, unlike in Europe, it failed to become a unifying national sport. In Australia it could not dislodge the winter games of Australian rules football (codified before soccer) and rugby. British immigrants to Australia did relatively little to develop football locally. Because southern European immigrants were more committed to founding clubs and tournaments, football became defined as an “ethnic game.” As a result, teams from Melbourne and Sydney with distinctive Mediterranean connections were the most prominent members of the National Soccer League (NSL) when it started in 1977. The league has widened its scope, however, to include a highly successful Perth side, plus a Brisbane club and even one from Auckland, New Zealand. The NSL collapsed in 2004, but a new league, known as the A-League, emerged the next year. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More In New Zealand, Scottish players established clubs and tournaments from the 1880s, but rugby became the national passion. In Asia, during the same germinal period, British traders, engineers, and teachers set up football clubs in such colonial outposts as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Burma (Myanmar). Yet football’s major problem across Asia, until the 1980s, was its failure to establish substantial roots among indigenous peoples beyond college students returning from Europe. Football in India was particularly prominent in Calcutta (Kolkata) among British soldiers, but locals soon adopted cricket. In Japan, Yokohama and Kobe housed large numbers of football-playing foreigners, but local people retained preferences for the traditional sport of sumo wrestling and the imported game of baseball. At the turn of the 21st century, football became increasingly important in Asian societies. In Iran, national team football matches became opportunities for many to express their reformist political views as well as for broad public celebration. The Iraqi men’s team’s fourth-place finish at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens struck a chord of hope for their war-torn homeland. The Asian game is organized by the Asian Football Confederation, comprising 46 members in 2011 and stretching geographically from Lebanon in the Middle East to Guam in the western Pacific Ocean. The Asian Cup for national teams has been held quadrennially since 1956; Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Japan have dominated, with South Korea a regular runner-up. These countries have also produced the most frequent winners of the annual Asian Club Championship, first contested in 1967. Asian economic growth during the 1980s and early 1990s and greater cultural ties to the West helped cultivate club football. Japan’s J-League was launched in 1993, attracting strong public interest and a sprinkling of famous foreign players and coaches (notably from South America). Attendance and revenue declined from 1995, but the league survived and was reorganized into two divisions of 16 and 10 clubs, respectively, by 1999. The league grew to 30 teams by 2005 but had reduced to 18 by 2018. Some memorable international moments have indicated the potential of football in Asia and Oceania. Asia’s first notable success was North Korea’s stunning defeat of Italy at the 1966 World Cup finals. In 1994 Saudi Arabia became the first Asian team to qualify for the World Cup’s second round. The entertaining 2002 World Cup hosted by Japan and South Korea and the on-field success of the host nations’ national teams (South Korea reached the semifinals; Japan reached the second round) stood as the region’s brightest accomplishment in international football. Football’s future in Asia and Oceania depends largely upon regular competition with top international teams and players. Increased representation in the World Cup finals (since 1998 Asia has sent four teams, and since 2006 Oceania has had a single automatic berth) has helped development of the sport in the region. Meanwhile, domestic club competitions across Asia and Oceania have been weakened by the need for top national players to join better clubs in Europe or South America to test and improve their talents at a markedly higher level. One promising development for the continent came in 2010 when Qatar was announced as the host of the 2022 World Cup, which will be the first World Cup held in the Middle East. Spectator problems The spread of football throughout the globe has brought together people from diverse cultures in celebration of a shared passion for the game, but it has also spawned a worldwide epidemic of spectator hooliganism. High emotions that sometimes escalate into violence, both on and off the field, have always been a part of the game, but concern with fan violence and hooliganism has intensified since the 1960s. The early focus of this concern was British fans, but the development of the anti-hooligan architecture of football grounds around the world points to the international scope of the problem. Stadiums in Latin America are constructed with moats and high fences. Many grounds in Europe now ban alcohol and no longer offer sections where fans can stand; those “terraces,” which charged lower admission than ticketed seating, were the traditional flash points of fan violence. Some of the first modern hooligan groups were found in Scotland, where religious sectarianism arose among the supporters of two Glasgow teams: Rangers, whose fans were predominantly Protestant unionists, and Celtic, whose fans were drawn largely from the city’s sizeable Irish Catholic community. Between the World Wars, “razor gangs” fought street battles when these two clubs met. Since the late 1960s, however, English fan hooliganism has been even more notorious, especially when English supporters have followed their teams overseas. The nadir of fan violence came during the mid-1980s. At the European Cup final in 1985 between Liverpool and the Italian club Juventus at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, 39 fans (38 Italian, 1 Belgian) died and more than 400 were injured when, as Liverpool supporters charged opposing fans, a stadium wall collapsed under the pressure of those fleeing. In response, English clubs were banned from European competition until 1990, but by then hooliganism had become established in many other European countries. By the turn of the 21st century, self-identifying hooligans could be found among German, Dutch, Belgian, and Scottish supporters. Elsewhere, militant fans included the ultras in Italy and southern France, and the various hinchadas of Spain and Latin America, whose levels of violence varied from club to club. Argentina has experienced perhaps the worst consequences, with an estimated 148 deaths between 1939 and 2003 from violent incidents that often involved security forces. The causes of football hooliganism are numerous and vary according to the political and cultural context. High levels of alcohol consumption can exaggerate supporter feelings and influence aggression, but this is neither the single nor the most important cause of hooliganism, given that many heavily intoxicated fans instead behave gregariously. In northern Europe fan violence has acquired an increasingly subcultural dimension. At major tournaments, self-identifying hooligans sometimes can spend weeks pursuing their distinctive peers among opposing supporters to engage in violence; the most successful combatants earn status within the subcultural network of hooligan groups. Research in Britain suggests these groups do not hail from society’s poorest members but usually from more-affluent working-class and lower middle-class backgrounds, depending upon regional characteristics. In southern Europe, notably in Italy, spectator violence can also reflect deep-seated cultural rivalries and tensions, especially between neighbouring cities or across the divide between north and south. In Latin America fan violence has been understood in relation to the modern politics of dictatorship and repressive state methods of social control. Moreover, the upsurge in violence in Argentina beginning in the late 1990s has been explained according to the severe decline of the national economy and the political system. In some circumstances, football hooliganism has forced politicians and the judiciary to intercede directly. In England the Conservative government of the 1980s targeted football hooligans with legislation, and the subsequent Labour administration unveiled further measures to control spectator behaviour inside stadiums. In Argentina, football matches were briefly suspended by the courts in 1999 in a bid to halt the violence. Football authorities have also recognized fan violence as a major impediment to the game’s economic and social health. In England attempts at reducing hooliganism have included all-seated stadiums and the creation of family-only stands. These measures have helped attract new, wealthier spectators, but critics have argued that the new policies have also diminished the colour and atmosphere at football grounds. More liberal anti-hooligan strategies encourage dialogue with supporters: the “fan projects” run by clubs and local authorities in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are the strongest illustrations of this approach. Still, the major threats to spectator safety tend to involve not fighting among supporters but rather a mixture of factors such as disorderly crowd responses to play in the match, unsafe facilities, and poor crowd-control techniques. In the developing world, crowd stampedes have caused many disasters, such as the 126 deaths in Ghana in 2001. Police attempts to quell disorderly crowds can backfire and exacerbate the dangers, as was the case in Peru in 1964 when 318 died and in Zimbabwe in 2000 when 13 died. Disastrous crowd management strategies and facilities that some have characterized as inhumane were at the root of the tragedy in Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, in 1989, in which 96 were fatally injured when they were crushed inside the football ground. It would be quite wrong, however, to portray the vast majority of football fans as inherently violent or xenophobic. Since the 1980s, organized supporter groups, along with football authorities and players, have waged both local and international campaigns against racism and (to a lesser extent) sexism within the game. Football supporters with the most positive, gregarious reputations—such as those following the Danish, Irish, and Brazilian national sides—tend to engage in self-policing within their own ranks, with few calls for outside assistance. As part of their Fair Play campaigns, international football bodies have introduced awards for the best-behaved supporters at major tournaments. In more challenging circumstances, English fan organizations such as the Football Supporters’ Federation have sought to improve the behaviour of their compatriots at matches overseas by planning meetings with local police officials and introducing “fan embassies” for visiting supporters. Across Europe, international fan networks have grown up to combat the racism that has also been reflected in some hooliganism. More generally, since the mid-1980s, the production of fanzines (fan magazines) across Britain and some other parts of Europe have served to promote the view that football fans are passionate, critical, humorous, and (for the great majority) not at all violent. Such fanzines have been supplemented by—and in many ways surpassed by—Internet fan sites in the 21st century. Richard C. Giulianotti Play of the game The rules of football regarding equipment, field of play, conduct of participants, and settling of results are built around 17 laws. The International Football Association Board, consisting of delegates from FIFA and the four football associations from the United Kingdom, is empowered to amend the laws. Equipment and field of play Know the chemistry involved in making the soccer ball or brazuca used during the 2014 World Cup Know the chemistry involved in making the soccer ball or brazuca used during the 2014 World Cup See all videos for this article The object of football is to maneuver the ball into the opposing team’s goal, using any part of the body except the hands and arms. The side scoring more goals wins. The ball is round, covered with leather or some other suitable material, and inflated; it must be 27–27.5 inches (68–70 cm) in circumference and 14.5–16 ounces (410–450 grams) in weight. A game lasts 90 minutes and is divided into halves; the halftime interval lasts 15 minutes, during which the teams change ends. Additional time may be added by the referee to compensate for stoppages in play (for example, player injuries). If neither side wins, and if a victor must be established, “extra-time” is played, and then, if required, a series of penalty kicks may be taken. The penalty area, a rectangular area in front of the goal, is 44 yards (40.2 metres) wide and extends 18 yards (16.5 metres) into the field. The goal is a frame, backed by a net, measuring 8 yards (7.3 metres) wide and 8 feet (2.4 metres) high. The playing field (pitch) should be 100–130 yards (90–120 metres) long and 50–100 yards (45–90 metres) wide; for international matches, it must be 110–120 yards long and 70–80 yards wide. Women, children, and mature players may play a shorter game on a smaller field. The game is controlled by a referee, who is also the timekeeper, and two assistants who patrol the touchlines, or sidelines, signaling when the ball goes out of play and when players are offside. Players wear jerseys with numbers, shorts, and socks that designate the team for whom they are playing. Shoes and shin guards must be worn. The two teams must wear identifiably different uniforms, and goalkeepers must be distinguishable from all players and match officials. Fouls Free kicks are awarded for fouls or violations of rules; when a free kick is taken, all players of the offending side must be 10 yards (9 metres) from the ball. Free kicks may be either direct (from which a goal may be scored), for more serious fouls, or indirect (from which a goal cannot be scored), for lesser violations. Penalty kicks, introduced in 1891, are awarded for more serious fouls committed inside the area. The penalty kick is a direct free kick awarded to the attacking side and is taken from a spot 12 yards (11 metres) from goal, with all players other than the defending goalkeeper and the kicker outside the penalty area. Since 1970, players guilty of a serious foul are given a yellow caution card; a second caution earns a red card and ejection from the game. Players may also be sent off directly for particularly serious fouls, such as violent conduct. Rules There were few major alterations to football’s laws through the 20th century. Indeed, until the changes of the 1990s, the most significant amendment to the rules came in 1925, when the offside rule was rewritten. Previously, an attacking player (i.e., one in the opponent’s half of the playing field) was offside if, when the ball was “played” to him, fewer than three opposing players were between him and the goal. The rule change, which reduced the required number of intervening players to two, was effective in promoting more goals. In response, new defensive tactics and team formations emerged. Player substitutions were introduced in 1965; teams have been allowed to field three substitutes since 1995. More recent rule changes have helped increase the tempo, attacking incidents, and amount of effective play in games. The pass-back rule now prohibits goalkeepers from handling the ball after it is kicked to them by a teammate. “Professional fouls,” which are deliberately committed to prevent opponents from scoring, are punished by red cards, as is tackling (taking the ball away from a player by kicking or stopping it with one’s feet) from behind. Players are cautioned for “diving” (feigning being fouled) to win free kicks or penalties. Time wasting has been addressed by forcing goalkeepers to clear the ball from hand within six seconds and by having injured players removed by stretcher from the pitch. Finally, the offside rule was adjusted to allow attackers who are level with the penultimate defender to be onside. Interpretation of football’s rules is influenced heavily by cultural and tournament contexts. Lifting one’s feet over waist level to play the ball is less likely to be penalized as dangerous play in Britain than in southern Europe. The British game can be similarly lenient in punishing the tackle from behind, in contrast to the trend in recent World Cup matches. FIFA insists that “the referee’s decision is final,” and it is reluctant to break the flow of games to allow for video assessment on marginal decisions. However, the most significant future amendments or reinterpretations of football’s rules may deploy more efficient technology to assist match officials. Post-match video evidence is used now by football’s disciplinary committees, particularly to adjudicate violent play or to evaluate performances by match officials. Strategy and tactics Use of the feet and (to a lesser extent) the legs to control and pass the ball is football’s most basic skill. Heading the ball is particularly prominent when receiving long aerial passes. Since the game’s origins, players have displayed their individual skills by going on “solo runs” or dribbling the ball past outwitted opponents. But football is essentially a team game based on passing between team members. The basic playing styles and skills of individual players reflect their respective playing positions. Goalkeepers require agility and height to reach and block the ball when opponents shoot at goal. Central defenders have to challenge the direct attacking play of opponents; called upon to win tackles and to head the ball away from danger such as when defending corner kicks, they are usually big and strong. Fullbacks are typically smaller but quicker, qualities required to match speedy wing-forwards. Midfield players (also called halfs or halfbacks) operate across the middle of the field and may have a range of qualities: powerful “ball-winners” need to be “good in the tackle” in terms of winning or protecting the ball and energetic runners; creative “playmakers” develop scoring chances through their talent at holding the ball and through accurate passing. Wingers tend to have good speed, some dribbling skills, and the ability to make crossing passes that travel across the front of goal and provide scoring opportunities for forwards. Forwards can be powerful in the air or small and penetrative with quick footwork; essentially, they should be adept at scoring goals from any angle. Tactics reflect the importance of planning for matches. Tactics create a playing system that links a team’s formation to a particular style of play (such as attacking or counterattacking, slow or quick tempo, short or long passing, teamwork or individualistic play). Team formations do not count the goalkeeper and enumerate the deployment of players by position, listing defenders first, then midfielders, and finally attackers (for example, 4-4-2 or 2-3-5). The earliest teams played in attack-oriented formations (such as 1-1-8 or 1-2-7) with strong emphasis on individual dribbling skills. In the late 19th century, the Scots introduced the passing game, and Preston North End created the more cautious 2-3-5 system. Although the English were associated with a cruder kick-and-rush style, teamwork and deliberate passing were evidently the more farsighted aspects of an effective playing system as playing skills and tactical acumen increased. Between the wars, Herbert Chapman, the astute manager of London’s Arsenal club, created the WM formation, featuring five defenders and five attackers: three backs and two halves in defensive roles, and two inside forwards assisting the three attacking forwards. Chapman’s system withdrew the midfield centre-half into defense in response to the 1925 offside rule change and often involved effective counterattacking, which exploited the creative genius of withdrawn forward Alex James as well as Cliff Bastin’s goal-scoring prowess. Some teams outside Britain also withdrew their centre-half, but others (such as Italy at the 1934 World Cup, and many South American sides) retained the original 2-3-5 formation. By the outbreak of World War II, many clubs, countries, and regions had developed distinctive playing styles—such as the powerful combative play of the English, the technical short-passing skills of the Danubian School, and the criollo artistry and dribbling of Argentinians. After the war, numerous tactical variations arose. Hungary introduced the deep-lying centre-forward to confuse opposing defenders, who could not decide whether to mark the player in midfield or let him roam freely behind the forwards. The complex Swiss verrou system, perfected by Karl Rappan, saw players switch positions and duties depending on the game’s pattern. It was the first system to play four players in defense and to use one of them as a “security bolt” behind the other three. Counterattacking football was adopted by top Italian clubs, notably Internazionale of Milan. Subsequently, the catenaccio system developed by Helenio Herrera at Internazionale copied the verrou system, playing a libero (free man) in defense. The system was highly effective but made for highly tactical football centred on defense that was often tedious to watch. Several factors contributed to the generation of more defensive, negative playing styles and team formations. With improved fitness training, players showed more speed and stamina, reducing the time and space for opponents to operate. The rules of football competitions (such as European club tournaments) often have encouraged visiting teams to play for draws, while teams playing at home are very wary of conceding goals. Local and national pressures not to lose matches have been intense, and many coaches discourage players from taking risks. As football’s playing systems became more rationalized, players were no longer expected to stay in set positions but to be more adaptable. The major victim was the wing-forward, the creator of attacking openings, whose defensive limitations were often exposed. Internationally, Brazil became the greatest symbol of individualistic, flowing football. Brazil borrowed the 4-2-4 formation founded in Uruguay to win the 1958 World Cup; the tournament was widely televised, thus helping Brazil’s highly skilled players capture the world’s imagination. For the 1962 tournament in Chile, Brazil triumphed again, withdrawing one winger into midfield to create 4-3-3. England’s “Wingless Wonders” won the 1966 tournament with a more cautious variant of 4-3-3 that was really 4-4-2, employing no real wingers and a set of players more suited to work than creative passing or dribbling skills. In the early 1970s, the Dutch “total football” system employed players with all-around skills to perform both defensive and attacking duties, but with more aesthetically pleasing consequences. Players such as Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens provided the perfect outlets for this highly fluent and intelligent playing system. Holland’s leading club—Ajax of Amsterdam—helped direct total football into a 3-4-3 system; Ajax’s long-term success was also built upon one of the world’s leading scouting and coaching systems, creating a veritable conveyor belt of educated, versatile players. However, hustling playing styles built around the now classic 4-4-2 formation have been especially prominent in Europe, notably as a result of the successes of English clubs in European competition from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. The great Milan team of the late 1980s recruited the talented Dutch triumvirate of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, and Marco van Basten, but their national and European success was founded too upon a “pressing” system in which opponents were challenged relentlessly for every loose ball. The move towards efficient playing systems such as 4-4-2 saw changes in defensive tactics. Zonal defending, based on controlling specific spaces, became more prominent. Conversely, the classic catenaccio system had enabled greater man-to-man marking of forwards by defenders, with the libero providing backup when required. Subsequently, some European clubs introduced 3-5-2 formations using wingbacks (a hybrid of fullback and attacking winger) on either side of the midfield. Players such as Roberto Carlos of Real Madrid and Brazil are outstanding exponents of this new role, but for most wingbacks their attacking potential is often lost in midfield congestion and compromised by their lack of dribbling skills. After 1990, as media coverage of football increased in Europe and South America and as the game enjoyed a rise in popularity, playing systems underwent closer analysis. They are now often presented in strings of four: 1-3-4-2 features a libero, three defenders, four midfielders and two forwards; 4-4-1-1 calls for four defenders, four midfielders, and a split strike force with one forward playing behind the other. The different roles and playing spaces of midfield players have become more obvious: for example, the four-player midfield diamond shape has one player in an attacking role, two playing across the centre, and one playing a holding role in front of the defenders. Starting saving Saving can be hard. Here are some ways to get started. Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Differences in playing systems between Latin American and European teams have declined markedly. During the 1960s and ’70s, Brazilian and Argentinian teams went through “modernizing” phases in which the European values of efficiency, physical strength, and professionalism were promoted in place of more traditional local styles that emphasized greater individualism and display of technical skills. South American national teams are now very likely to be composed entirely of players who perform for European clubs and to play familiar 3-5-2 or 4-4-2 systems. For all these tactical developments, football’s finest players and greatest icons remain the brilliant individualists: the gifted midfield playmakers, the dazzling wingers, or the second forwards linking the midfield to the principal attacker. Some leading postwar exponents have included Pelé, Rivaldo, and Ronaldo (Brazil), Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi (Argentina), Roberto Baggio and Francesco Totti (Italy), Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane (France), George Best (Northern Ireland), Stanley Matthews and Paul Gascoigne (England), Ryan Giggs (Wales), Luis Figo, Eusébio, and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal), and Jim Baxter and Derek Johnstone (Scotland). Richard C. Giulianotti Jack Rollin Bernard Joy FIFA men’s World Cup winners Winners of the FIFA men’s World Cup are provided in the table. ' FIFA World Cup—men year  result *Won after extra time (AET). **Won on penalty kicks. 1930  Uruguay  4  Argentina  2 1934  Italy*  2  Czechoslovakia  1 1938  Italy  4  Hungary  2 1950  Uruguay  2  Brazil  1 1954  West Germany  3  Hungary  2 1958  Brazil  5  Sweden  2 1962  Brazil  3  Czechoslovakia  1 1966  England*  4  West Germany  2 1970  Brazil  4  Italy  1 1974  West Germany  2  Netherlands  1 1978  Argentina*  3  Netherlands  1 1982  Italy  3  West Germany  1 1986  Argentina  3  West Germany  2 1990  West Germany  1  Argentina  0 1994  Brazil**  0  Italy  0 1998  France  3  Brazil  0 2002  Brazil  2  Germany  0 2006  Italy**  1  France  1 2010  Spain*  1  Netherlands  0 2014  Germany*  1  Argentina  0 2018  France  4  Croatia  2 2022  Argentina**  3  France  3 FIFA women’s World Cup winners Winners of the FIFA women’s World Cup are provided in the table. FIFA World Cup—women year  result *Won on penalty kicks. 1991  United States  2  Norway  1 1995  Norway  2  Germany  0 1999  United States*  0  China  0 2003  Germany  2  Sweden  1 2007  Germany  2  Brazil  0 2011  Japan*  2  United States  2 2015  United States  5  Japan  2 2019  United States  2  Netherlands  0 UEFA Champions League winners Winners of the UEFA Champions League are provided in the table. UEFA Champions League* season  winner (country)  runner-up (country)  score *Known as the European Cup from 1955–56 to 1991–92. **Final replayed after first match ended in a 1–1 draw. ***Won in a penalty kick shoot-out. 1955–56  Real Madrid (Spain)  Stade de Reims (France)  4–3 1956–57  Real Madrid (Spain)  Fiorentina (Italy)  2–0 1957–58  Real Madrid (Spain)  AC Milan (Italy)  3–2 (OT) 1958–59  Real Madrid (Spain)  Stade de Reims (France)  2–0 1959–60  Real Madrid (Spain)  Eintracht Frankfurt (W.Ger.)  7–3 1960–61  Benfica (Port.)  FC Barcelona (Spain)  3–2 1961–62  Benfica (Port.)  Real Madrid (Spain)  5–3 1962–63  AC Milan (Italy)  Benfica (Port.)  2–1 1963–64  Inter Milan (Italy)  Real Madrid (Spain)  3–1 1964–65  Inter Milan (Italy)  Benfica (Port.)  1–0 1965–66  Real Madrid (Spain)  Partizan Belgrade (Yugos.)  2–1 1966–67  Celtic (Scot.)  Inter Milan (Italy)  2–1 1967–68  Manchester United (Eng.)  Benfica (Port.)  4–1 (OT) 1968–69  AC Milan (Italy)  Ajax (Neth.)  4–1 1969–70  Feyenoord (Neth.)  Celtic (Scot.)  2–1 (OT) 1970–71  Ajax (Neth.)  Panathinaikos (Greece)  2–0 1971–72  Ajax (Neth.)  Inter Milan (Italy)  2–0 1972–73  Ajax (Neth.)  Juventus (Italy)  1–0 1973–74  Bayern Munich (W.Ger.)  Atlético Madrid (Spain)  4–0** 1974–75  Bayern Munich (W.Ger.)  Leeds United (Eng.)  2–0 1975–76  Bayern Munich (W.Ger.)  AS Saint-Étienne (France)  1–0 1976–77  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Borussia Mönchengladbach (W.Ger.)  3–1 1977–78  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Club Brugge (Belg.)  1–0 1978–79  Nottingham Forest (Eng.)  Malmö FF (Swed.)  1–0 1979–80  Nottingham Forest (Eng.)  Hamburg SV (W.Ger.)  1–0 1980–81  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Real Madrid (Spain)  1–0 1981–82  Aston Villa (Eng.)  Bayern Munich (W.Ger.)  1–0 1982–83  Hamburg SV (W.Ger.)  Juventus (Italy)  1–0 1983–84  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  AS Roma (Italy)  1–1*** 1984–85  Juventus (Italy)  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  1–0 1985–86  Steaua Bucharest (Rom.)  FC Barcelona (Spain)  0–0*** 1986–87  FC Porto (Port.)  Bayern Munich (W.Ger.)  2–1 1987–88  PSV Eindhoven (Neth.)  Benfica (Port.)  0–0*** 1988–89  AC Milan (Italy)  Steaua Bucharest (Rom.)  4–0 1989–90  AC Milan (Italy)  Benfica (Port.)  1–0 1990–91  Red Star Belgrade (Yugos.)  Olympique de Marseille (France)  0–0*** 1991–92  FC Barcelona (Spain)  Sampdoria (Italy)  1–0 (OT) 1992–93  Olympique de Marseille (France)  AC Milan (Italy)  1–0 1993–94  AC Milan (Italy)  FC Barcelona (Spain)  4–0 1994–95  Ajax (Neth.)  AC Milan (Italy)  1–0 1995–96  Juventus (Italy)  Ajax (Neth.)  1–1*** 1996–97  Borussia Dortmund (Ger.)  Juventus (Italy)  3–1 1997–98  Real Madrid (Spain)  Juventus (Italy)  1–0 1998–99  Manchester United (Eng.)  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  2–1 1999–2000  Real Madrid (Spain)  Valencia CF (Spain)  3–0 2000–01  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  Valencia CF (Spain)  1–1*** 2001–02  Real Madrid (Spain)  Bayer Leverkusen (Ger.)  2–1 2002–03  AC Milan (Italy)  Juventus (Italy)  0–0*** 2003–04  FC Porto (Port.)  AS Monaco (France)  3–0 2004–05  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  AC Milan (Italy)  3–3*** 2005–06  FC Barcelona (Spain)  Arsenal (Eng.)  2–1 2006–07  AC Milan (Italy)  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  2–1 2007–08  Manchester United (Eng.)  Chelsea FC (Eng.)  1–1*** 2008–09  FC Barcelona (Spain)  Manchester United (Eng.)  2–0 2009–10  Inter Milan (Italy)  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  2–0 2010–11  FC Barcelona (Spain)  Manchester United (Eng.)  3–1 2011–12  Chelsea FC (Eng.)  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  1–1*** 2012–13  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  Borussia Dortmund (Ger.)  2–1 2013–14  Real Madrid (Spain)  Atlético Madrid (Spain)  4–1 (OT) 2014–15  FC Barcelona (Spain)  Juventus (Italy)  3–1 2015–16  Real Madrid (Spain)  Atlético Madrid (Spain)  1–1*** 2016–17  Real Madrid (Spain)  Juventus (Italy)  4–1 2017–18  Real Madrid (Spain)  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  3–1 2018–19  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Tottenham Hotspur (Eng.)  2–0 2019–20  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  Paris Saint-Germain (France)  1–0 UEFA Europa League winners Winners of the UEFA Europa League are provided in the table. UEFA Europa League* season  winner (country)  runner-up (country)  scores *UEFA Cup until 2009–10. **Won in a penalty kick shoot-out. 1971–72  Tottenham Hotspur (Eng.)  Wolverhampton Wanderers (Eng.)  2–1, 1–1 1972–73  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Borussia Mönchengladbach (W.Ger.)  3–0, 0–2 1973–74  Feyenoord (Neth.)  Tottenham Hotspur (Eng.)  2–2, 2–0 1974–75  Borussia Mönchengladbach (W.Ger.)  FC Twente (Neth.)  0–0, 5–1 1975–76  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Club Brugge (Belg.)  3–2, 1–1 1976–77  Juventus (Italy)  Athletic Club Bilbao (Spain)  1–0, 1–2 1977–78  PSV Eindhoven (Neth.)  SC Bastia (France)  0–0, 3–0 1978–79  Borussia Mönchengladbach (W.Ger.)  Red Star Belgrade (Yugos.)  1–1, 1–0 1979–80  Eintracht Frankfurt (W.Ger.)  Borussia Mönchengladbach (W.Ger.)  2–3, 1–0 1980–81  Ipswich Town (Eng.)  AZ Alkmaar (Neth.)  3–0, 2–4 1981–82  IFK Göteborg (Swed.)  Hamburg SV (W.Ger.)  1–0, 3–0 1982–83  RSC Anderlecht (Belg.)  Benfica (Port.)  1–0, 1–1 1983–84  Tottenham Hotspur (Eng.)  RSC Anderlecht (Belg.)  1–1, 1–1 (4–3**) 1984–85  Real Madrid (Spain)  Videoton (Hung.)  3–0, 0–1 1985–86  Real Madrid (Spain)  FC Cologne (W.Ger.)  5–1, 0–2 1986–87  IFK Göteborg (Swed.)  Dundee United (Scot.)  1–0, 1–1 1987–88  Bayer Leverkusen (W.Ger.)  RCD Espanyol (Spain)  0–3, 3–0 (3–2**) 1988–89  SSC Napoli (Italy)  VfB Stuttgart (W.Ger.)  2–1, 3–3 1989–90  Juventus (Italy)  Fiorentina (Italy)  3–1, 0–0 1990–91  Inter Milan (Italy)  AS Roma (Italy)  2–0, 0–1 1991–92  Ajax (Neth.)  Torino Calcio (Italy)  2–2, 0–0 1992–93  Juventus (Italy)  Borussia Dortmund (Ger.)  3–1, 3–0 1993–94  Inter Milan (Italy)  SV Austria Salzburg (Austria)  1–0, 1–0 1994–95  Parma AC (Italy)  Juventus (Italy)  1–0, 1–1 1995–96  Bayern Munich (Ger.)  FC Girondins de Bordeaux (France)  2–0, 3–1 1996–97  FC Schalke 04 (Ger.)  Inter Milan (Italy)  1–0, 0–1 (4–1**) 1997–98  Inter Milan (Italy)  SS Lazio (Italy)  3–0 1998–99  Parma AC (Italy)  Olympique de Marseille (France)  3–0 1999–2000  Galatasaray SK (Tur.)  Arsenal (Eng.)  0–0 (4–1**) 2000–01  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  Deportivo Alavés (Spain)  5–4 2001–02  Feyenoord (Neth.)  Borussia Dortmund (Ger.)  3–2 2002–03  FC Porto (Port.)  Celtic (Scot.)  3–2 2003–04  Valencia CF (Spain)  Olympique de Marseille (France)  2–0 2004–05  CSKA Moscow (Russia)  Sporting Clube de Portugal (Port.)  3–1 2005–06  Sevilla FC (Spain)  Middlesbrough FC (Eng.)  4–0 2006–07  Sevilla FC (Spain)  RCD Espanyol (Spain)  2–2 (3–1**) 2007–08  FC Zenit St. Petersburg (Russia)  Rangers (Scot.)  2–0 2008–09  Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukr.)  Werder Bremen (Ger.)  2–1 2009–10  Atlético de Madrid (Spain)  Fulham FC (Eng.)  2–1 2010–11  FC Porto (Port.)  SC Braga (Port.)  1–0 2011–12  Atlético de Madrid (Spain)  Athletic Club Bilbao (Spain)  3–0 2012–13  Chelsea FC (Eng.)  Benfica (Port.)  2–1 2013–14  Sevilla FC (Spain)  Benfica (Port.)  0–0 (4–2**) 2014–15  Sevilla FC (Spain)  Dnipro (Ukr.)  3–2 2015–16  Sevilla FC (Spain)  Liverpool FC (Eng.)  3–1 2016–17  Manchester United (Eng.)  Ajax (Neth.)  2–0 2017–18  Atlético de Madrid (Spain)  Olympique de Marseille (France)  3–0 2018–19  Chelsea FC (Eng.)  Arsenal (Eng.)  4–1 Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup winners Winners of the MLS Cup are provided in the table. Major League Soccer (MLS) Cup year  winner  runner-up  score *Won on penalty kicks. 1996  DC United  Los Angeles Galaxy  3–2 (OT) 1997  DC United  Colorado Rapids  2–1 1998  Chicago Fire  DC United  2–0 1999  DC United  Los Angeles Galaxy  2–0 2000  Kansas City Wizards  Chicago Fire  1–0 2001  San Jose Earthquakes  Los Angeles Galaxy  2–1 (OT) 2002  Los Angeles Galaxy  New England Revolution  1–0 2003  San Jose Earthquakes  Chicago Fire  4–2 2004  DC United  Kansas City Wizards  3–2 2005  Los Angeles Galaxy  New England Revolution  1–0 (OT) 2006  Houston Dynamo  New England Revolution  1–1* 2007  Houston Dynamo  New England Revolution  2–1 2008  Columbus Crew  New York Red Bulls  3–1 2009  Real Salt Lake  Los Angeles Galaxy  1–1* 2010  Colorado Rapids  FC Dallas  2–1 (OT) 2011  Los Angeles Galaxy  Houston Dynamo  1–0 2012  Los Angeles Galaxy  Houston Dynamo  3–1 2013  Sporting Kansas City  Real Salt Lake  1–1* 2014  Los Angeles Galaxy  New England Revolution  2–1 2015  Portland Timbers  Columbus Crew  2–1 2016  Seattle Sounders  Toronto FC  0–0* 2017  Toronto FC  Seattle Sounders  2–0 2018  Atlanta United  Portland Timbers  2–0 2019  Seattle Sounders  Toronto FC  3–1 2020  Columbus Crew  Seattle Sounders  3–0 2021  New York City FC  Portland Timbers  1–1* 2022  Los Angeles FC  Philadelphia Union  3–3* sports Table of Contents     Introduction History     Sociology of sports     Psychology of sports     Gambling and sports Fast Facts     Related Content Read Next     How Are Sports Chosen for the Olympics?     10 Unusual Sports     7 Unsportsmanlike Sportsmen     10 Great Sports Rivalries Quizzes     Turn Up the Heat     Sports Moments Nicknames Quiz     Sports Quiz     Great Moments in Sports Quiz     I Am the Greatest (Athlete) Media     Videos     Images More     More Articles On This Topic     Additional Reading     Contributors     Article History Home Entertainment & Pop Culture Leisure & Nightlife sports Written by , , See All Fact-checked by Last Updated: May 4, 2023 • Article History Argentina after winning the 2022 World Cup Argentina after winning the 2022 World Cup See all media Key People:     Bud Selig Mukesh Ambani Damon Runyon Grantland Rice Jack Brickhouse  Related Topics:     baseball boxing golf American football winter sports  Recent News May. 4, 2023, 8:59 PM ET (AP) Alabama fires baseball coach after report of suspicious bets Alabama is firing baseball coach Brad Bohannon, saying he violated “the standards, duties and responsibilities expected of university employees.” Apr. 26, 2023, 5:06 PM ET (AP) NFL, other leagues balancing betting revenue, game integrity The NFL and other sports leagues spent many years staying as far away as they could from sports betting because they said it was necessary to protect the integrity of their games sports, physical contests pursued for the goals and challenges they entail. Sports are part of every culture past and present, but each culture has its own definition of sports. The most useful definitions are those that clarify the relationship of sports to play, games, and contests. “Play,” wrote the German theorist Carl Diem, “is purposeless activity, for its own sake, the opposite of work.” Humans work because they have to; they play because they want to. Play is autotelic—that is, it has its own goals. It is voluntary and uncoerced. Recalcitrant children compelled by their parents or teachers to compete in a game of football (soccer) are not really engaged in a sport. Neither are professional athletes if their only motivation is their paycheck. In the real world, as a practical matter, motives are frequently mixed and often quite impossible to determine. Unambiguous definition is nonetheless a prerequisite to practical determinations about what is and is not an example of play. There are at least two types of play. The first is spontaneous and unconstrained. Examples abound. A child sees a flat stone, picks it up, and sends it skipping across the waters of a pond. An adult realizes with a laugh that he has uttered an unintended pun. Neither action is premeditated, and both are at least relatively free of constraint. The second type of play is regulated. There are rules to determine which actions are legitimate and which are not. These rules transform spontaneous play into games, which can thus be defined as rule-bound or regulated play. Leapfrog, chess, “playing house,” and basketball are all games, some with rather simple rules, others governed by a somewhat more complex set of regulations. In fact, the rule books for games such as basketball are hundreds of pages long. As games, chess and basketball are obviously different from leapfrog and playing house. The first two games are competitive, the second two are not. One can win a game of basketball, but it makes no sense to ask who has won a game of leapfrog. In other words, chess and basketball are contests. A final distinction separates contests into two types: those that require at least a minimum of physical skill and those that do not. Shuffleboard is a good example of the first; the board games Scrabble and Monopoly will do to exemplify the second. It must of course be understood that even the simplest sports, such as weightlifting, require a modicum of intellectual effort, while others, such as baseball, involve a considerable amount of mental alertness. It must also be understood that the sports that have most excited the passions of humankind, as participants and as spectators, have required a great deal more physical prowess than a game of shuffleboard. Through the ages, sports heroes have demonstrated awesome strength, speed, stamina, endurance, and dexterity. Serena Williams poses with the Daphne Akhurst Trophy after winning the Women's Singles final against Venus Williams of the United States on day 13 of the 2017 Australian Open at Melbourne Park on January 28, 2017 in Melbourne, Australia. (tennis, sports) Britannica Quiz Great Moments in Sports Quiz levels of playSports, then, can be defined as autotelic (played for their own sake) physical contests. On the basis of this definition, one can devise a simple inverted-tree diagram. Despite the clarity of the definition, difficult questions arise. Is mountain climbing a sport? It is if one understands the activity as a contest between the climber and the mountain or as a competition between climbers to be the first to accomplish an ascent. Are the drivers at the Indianapolis 500 automobile race really athletes? They are if one believes that at least a modicum of physical skill is required for winning the competition. The point of a clear definition is that it enables one to give more or less satisfactory answers to questions such as these. One can hardly understand sport if one does not begin with some conception of what sports are. History No one can say when sports began. Since it is impossible to imagine a time when children did not spontaneously run races or wrestle, it is clear that children have always included sports in their play, but one can only speculate about the emergence of sports as autotelic physical contests for adults. Hunters are depicted in prehistoric art, but it cannot be known whether the hunters pursued their prey in a mood of grim necessity or with the joyful abandon of sportsmen. It is certain, however, from the rich literary and iconographic evidence of all ancient civilizations that hunting soon became an end in itself—at least for royalty and nobility. Archaeological evidence also indicates that ball games were common among ancient peoples as different as the Chinese and the Aztecs. If ball games were contests rather than noncompetitive ritual performances, such as the Japanese football game kemari, then they were sports in the most rigorously defined sense. That it cannot simply be assumed that they were contests is clear from the evidence presented by Greek and Roman antiquity, which indicates that ball games had been for the most part playful pastimes like those recommended for health by the Greek physician Galen in the 2nd century ce. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Traditional African sports It is unlikely that the 7th-century Islamic conquest of North Africa radically altered the traditional sports of the region. As long as wars were fought with bow and arrow, archery contests continued to serve as demonstrations of ready prowess. The prophet Muhammad specifically authorized horse races, and geography dictated that men race camels as well as horses. Hunters, too, took their pleasures on horseback. Among the many games of North Africa was ta kurt om el mahag (“the ball of the pilgrim’s mother”), a Berber bat-and-ball contest whose configuration bore an uncanny resemblance to baseball. Koura, more widely played, was similar to football (soccer). Cultural variation among black Africans was far greater than among the Arab peoples of the northern littoral. Ball games were rare, but wrestling of one kind or another was ubiquitous. Wrestling’s forms and functions varied from tribe to tribe. For the Nuba of southern Sudan, ritual bouts, for which men’s bodies were elaborately decorated as well as carefully trained, were the primary source of male status and prestige. The Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda were among the peoples who staged contests between females. Among the various peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, wrestling matches were a way to celebrate or symbolically encourage human fertility and the earth’s fecundity. In southern Nigeria, for instance, Igbo tribesmen participated in wrestling matches held every eighth day throughout the three months of the rainy season; hard-fought contests, it was thought, persuaded the gods to grant abundant harvests of corn (maize) and yams. Among the Diola of the Gambia, adolescent boys and girls wrestled (though not against one another) in what was clearly a prenuptial ceremony. Male champions were married to their female counterparts. In other tribes, such as the Yala of Nigeria, the Fon of Benin, and the Njabi of the Congo, boys and girls grappled with each other. Among the Kole, it was the kin of the bride and the bridegroom who wrestled. Stick fights, which seem to have been less closely associated with religious practices, were common among many tribes, including the Zulu and Mpondo of southern Africa. Contests for runners and jumpers were to be found across the length and breadth of the continent. During the age of imperialism, explorers and colonizers were often astonished by the prowess of these “primitive” peoples. Nandi runners of Kenya’s Rift Valley seemed to run distances effortlessly at a pace that brought European runners to pitiable physical collapse. Tutsi high jumpers of Rwanda and Burundi soared to heights that might have seemed incredible had not the jumpers been photographed in flight by members of Adolf Friedrich zu Mecklenburg’s anthropological expedition at the turn of the 20th century. Long before European conquest introduced modern sports and marginalized native customs, conversion to Islam tended to undercut—if not totally eliminate—the religious function of African sports, but elements of pre-Christian and pre-Islamic magical cults have survived into postcolonial times. Zulu football players rely not only on their coaches and trainers but also on the services of their inyanga (“witch doctor”). Traditional Asian sports Like the highly evolved civilizations of which they are a part, traditional Asian sports are ancient and various. Competitions were never as simple as they seemed to be. From the Islamic Middle East across the Indian subcontinent to China and Japan, wrestlers—mostly but not exclusively male—embodied and enacted the values of their cultures. The wrestler’s strength was always more than a merely personal statement. More often than not, the men who strained and struggled understood themselves to be involved in a religious endeavour. Prayers, incantations, and rituals of purification were for centuries an important aspect of the hand-to-hand combat of Islamic wrestlers. It was not unusual to combine the skills of the wrestler with those of a mystic poet. Indeed, the celebrated 14th-century Persian pahlavan (ritual wrestler) Maḥmūd Khwārezmī was both. Typical of the place of sport within a religious context was the spectacle of 50 sturdy Turks who wrestled in Istanbul in 1582 to celebrate the circumcision of the son of Murad III. When Indian wrestlers join an akhara (gymnasium), they commit themselves to the quest for a holy life. As devout Hindus, they recite mantras as they do their knee bends and push-ups. In their struggle against “pollution,” they strictly control their diet, sexual habits, breathing, and even their urination and defecation. While the religious aspects of Turkish and Iranian “houses of strength” (where weightlifting and gymnastics were practiced) became much less salient in the course of the 20th century, the elders in charge of Japanese sumo added a number of Shintō elements to the rituals of their sport to underscore their claim that it is a unique expression of Japanese tradition. A somewhat arbitrary distinction can be made between wrestling and the many forms of unarmed hand-to-hand combat categorized as martial arts. The emphasis of the latter is military rather than religious, instrumental rather than expressive. Chinese wushu (“military skill”), which included armed as well as unarmed combat, was highly developed by the 3rd century bce. Its unarmed techniques were especially prized within Chinese culture and were an important influence on the martial arts of Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Much less well known in the West are varma adi (“hitting the vital spots”) and other martial arts traditions of South Asia. In the early modern era, as unarmed combat became obsolete, the emphasis of Asian martial arts tended to shift back toward religion. This shift can often be seen in the language of sports. Japanese kenjutsu (“techniques of the sword”) became kendō (“the way of the sword”). Of the armed (as opposed to unarmed) martial arts, archery was among the most important in the lives of Asian warriors from the Arabian to the Korean peninsulas. Notably, the Japanese samurai practiced many forms of archery, the most colourful of which was probably yabusame, whose mounted contestants drew their bows and loosed their arrows while galloping down a straight track some 720 to 885 feet (220 to 270 metres) long. They were required to shoot in quick succession at three small targets—each about 9 square inches (55 square cm) placed on 3-foot- (0.9-metre-) high poles 23 to 36 feet (7 to 11 metres) from the track and spaced at intervals of 235 to 295 feet (71.5 to 90 metres). In yabusame, accuracy was paramount. In Turkey, where the composite (wood plus horn) bow was an instrument of great power, archers competed for distance. At Istanbul’s Okmeydanı (“Arrow Field”), the record was set in 1798 when Selim III’s arrow flew more than 2,900 feet (884 metres). As can be seen in Mughal art of the 16th and 17th centuries, aristocratic Indians—like their counterparts throughout Asia—used their bows and arrows for hunting as well as for archery contests. Mounted hunters demonstrated equestrian as well as toxophilite skills. The Asian aristocrat’s passion for horses, which can be traced as far back as Hittite times, if not earlier, led not only to horse races (universal throughout Asia) but also to the development of polo and a host of similar equestrian contests. These equestrian games may in fact be the most distinctive Asian contribution to the repertory of modern sports. In all probability, polo evolved from a far rougher game played by the nomads of Afghanistan and Central Asia. In the form that survived into the 21st century, Afghan buzkashi is characterized by a dusty melee in which hundreds of mounted tribesmen fought over the headless carcass of a goat. The winner was the hardy rider who managed to grab the animal by the leg and drag it clear of the pack. Since buzkashi was clearly an inappropriate passion for a civilized monarch, polo filled the bill. Persian manuscripts from the 6th century refer to polo played during the reign of Hormuz I (271–273). The game was painted by miniaturists and celebrated by Persian poets such as Ferdowsī (c. 935–c. 1020) and Ḥāfeẓ (1325/26–1389/90). By 627 polo had spread throughout the Indian subcontinent and had reached China, where it became a passion among those wealthy enough to own horses. (All 16 emperors of the Tang dynasty [618–907] were polo players.) As with most sports, the vast majority of polo players were male, but the 12th-century Persian poet Neẓāmī commemorated the skills of Princess Shīrīn. Moreover, if numerous terra-cotta figures can be trusted as evidence, polo was also played by aristocratic Chinese women. There were also ball games for ordinary men and women. Played with carefully sewn stuffed skins, with animal bladders, or with found objects as simple as gourds, chunks of wood, or rounded stones, ball games are universal. Ball games of all sorts were quite popular among the Chinese. Descriptions of the game cuju, which resembled modern football (soccer), appeared as early as the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220). Games similar to modern badminton were also played in the 1st century. Finally, the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) scroll painting Grove of Violets depicts elegantly attired ladies playing chuiwan, a game similar to modern golf. Sports of the ancient Mediterranean world Egypt Sports were unquestionably common in ancient Egypt, where pharaohs used their hunting prowess and exhibitions of strength and skill in archery to demonstrate their fitness to rule. In such exhibitions, pharaohs such as Amenhotep II (ruled 1426–1400 bce) never competed against anyone else, however, and there is reason to suspect that their extraordinary achievements were scribal fictions. Nonetheless, Egyptians with less claim to divinity wrestled, jumped, and engaged in ball games and stick fights. In paintings found at Beni Hassan, in a tomb dating from the Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630 bce), there are studies of 406 pairs of wrestlers demonstrating their skill. Crete and Greece Since Minoan script still baffles scholars, it is uncertain whether images of Cretan boys and girls testing their acrobatic skills against bulls depict sport, religious ritual, or both. That the feats of the Cretans may have been both sport and ritual is suggested by evidence from Greece, where sports had a cultural significance unequaled anywhere else before the rise of modern sports. Secular and religious motives mingle in history’s first extensive “sports report,” found in Book XXIII of Homer’s Iliad in the form of funeral games for the dead Patroclus. These games were part of Greek religion and were not, therefore, autotelic; the contests in the Odyssey, on the other hand, were essentially secular. Odysseus was challenged by the Phaeacians to demonstrate his prowess as an athlete. In general, Greek culture included both cultic sports, such as the Olympic Games honouring Zeus, and secular contests. The most famous association of sports and religion was certainly the Olympic Games, which Greek tradition dates from 776 bce. In the course of time, the earth goddess Gaea, originally worshiped at Olympia, was supplanted in importance by the sky god Zeus, in whose honour priestly officials conducted quadrennial athletic contests. Sacred games also were held at Delphi (in honour of Apollo), Corinth, and Nemea. These four events were known as the periodos, and great athletes, such as Theagenes of Thasos, prided themselves on victories at all four sites. Although most of the events contested at Greek sacred games remain familiar, the most important competition was the chariot race. The extraordinary prestige accorded athletic triumphs brought with it not only literary accolades (as in the odes of Pindar) and visual commemoration (in the form of statues of the victors) but also material benefits, contrary to the amateur myth propagated by 19th-century philhellenists. Since the Greeks were devoted to secular sports as well as to sacred games, no polis, or city-state, was considered a proper community if it lacked a gymnasium where, as the word gymnos indicates, naked male athletes trained and competed. Except in militaristic Sparta, Greek women rarely participated in sports of any kind. They were excluded from the Olympic Games even as spectators (except for the priestess of Demeter). The 2nd-century-ce traveler Pausanias wrote of races for girls at Olympia, but these events in honour of Hera were of minor importance. Rome Although chariot races were among the most popular sports spectacles of the Roman and Byzantine eras, as they had been in Greek times, the Romans of the republic and the early empire were quite selectively enthusiastic about Greek athletic contests. Emphasizing physical exercises for military preparedness, an important motive in all ancient civilizations, the Romans preferred boxing, wrestling, and hurling the javelin to running footraces and throwing the discus. The historian Livy wrote of Greek athletes’ appearing in Rome as early as 186 bce; however, the contestants’ nudity shocked Roman moralists. The emperor Augustus instituted the Actian Games in 27 bce to celebrate his victory over Antony and Cleopatra, and several of his successors began similar games, but it was not until the later empire, especially during the reign of Hadrian (117–138 ce), that many of the Roman elite developed an enthusiasm for Greek athletics. Greater numbers flocked to the chariot races held in Rome’s Circus Maximus. They were watched by as many as 250,000 spectators, five times the number that crowded into the Colosseum to enjoy gladiatorial combat. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that the latter contests were actually more popular than the former. Indeed, the munera, which pitted man against man, and the venationes, which set men against animals, became popular even in the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire, which historians once thought immune from the lust for blood. The greater frequency of chariot races can be explained in part by the fact that they were relatively inexpensive compared with the enormous costs of gladiatorial combat. The editor who staged the games usually rented the gladiators from a lanista (the manager of a troupe of gladiators) and was required to reimburse him for losers executed in response to a “thumbs down” sign. Brutal as these combats were, many of the gladiators were free men who volunteered to fight, an obvious sign of intrinsic motivation. Indeed, imperial edicts were needed to discourage the aristocracy’s participation. During the reign of Nero (54–68), female gladiators were introduced into the arena. The Roman circus and the Byzantine hippodrome continued to provide chariot racing long after Christian protests (and heavy economic costs) ended the gladiatorial games, probably early in the 5th century. In many ways the chariot races were quite modern. The charioteers were divided into bureaucratically organized factions (e.g., the “Blues” and the “Greens”), which excited the loyalties of fans from Britain to Mesopotamia. Charioteers boasted of the number of their victories as modern athletes brag about their “stats,” indicating, perhaps, some incipient awareness of what in modern times are called sports records. The gladiatorial games, however, like the Greek games before them, had a powerful religious dimension. The first Roman combats, in 264 bce, were probably derived from Etruscan funeral games in which mortal combat provided companions for the deceased. It was the idolatry of the games, even more than their brutality, that horrified Christian protesters. The less-obtrusive pagan religious associations of the chariot races helped them survive for centuries after Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 337 ce. Sports in the Middle Ages The sports of medieval Europe were less well-organized than those of classical antiquity. Fairs and seasonal festivals were occasions for men to lift stones or sacks of grain and for women to run smock races (for a smock, not in one). The favourite sport of the peasantry was folk football, a wild no-holds-barred unbounded game that pitted married men against bachelors or one village against another. The violence of the game, which survived in Britain and in France until the late 19th century, prompted Renaissance humanists, such as Sir Thomas Elyot, to condemn it as more likely to maim than to benefit the participants. The nascent bourgeoisie of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance amused itself with archery matches, some of which were arranged months in advance and staged with considerable fanfare. When town met town in a challenge of skill, the companies of crossbowmen and longbowmen marched behind the symbols of St. George, St. Sebastian, and other patrons of the sport. It was not unusual for contests in running, jumping, cudgeling, and wrestling to be offered for the lower classes who attended the match as spectators. Grand feasts were part of the program, and drunkenness commonly added to the revelry. In Germanic areas a Pritschenkoenig was supposed to simultaneously keep order and entertain the crowd with clever verses. knights jousting knights jousting Learn about the history of the medieval sport of jousting Learn about the history of the medieval sport of jousting See all videos for this article The burghers of medieval towns were welcome to watch the aristocracy at play, but they were not allowed to participate in tournaments or even, in most parts of Europe, to compete in imitative tournaments of their own. Tournaments were the jealously guarded prerogative of the medieval knight and were, along with hunting and hawking, his favourite pastime. At the tilt, in which mounted knights with lances tried to unhorse one another, the knight was practicing the art of war, his raison d’être. He displayed his prowess before lords, ladies, and commoners and profited not only from valuable prizes but also from ransoms exacted from the losers. Between the 12th and the 16th century, the dangerously wild free-for-all of the early tournament evolved into dramatic presentations of courtly life in which elaborate pageantry and allegorical display quite overshadowed the frequently inept jousting. Some danger remained even amid the display. At one of the last great tournaments, in 1559, Henry II of France was mortally wounded by a splintered lance. Peasant women participated freely in the ball games and footraces of medieval times, and aristocratic ladies hunted and kept falcons, but middle-class women contented themselves with spectatorship. Even so, they were more active than their contemporaries in Heian Japan during the 8th to 12th centuries. Encumbered by many-layered robes and sequestered in their homes, the Japanese ladies were unable to do more than peep from behind their screens at the courtiers’ mounted archery contests. Sports in the Renaissance and modern periods By the time of the Renaissance, sports had become entirely secular, but in the minds of the 17th-century Czech educator John Amos Comenius and other humanists, a concern for physical education on what were thought to be classic models overshadowed the competitive aspects of sports. Indeed, 15th- and 16th-century elites preferred dances to sports and delighted in geometric patterns of movement. Influenced by the ballet, which developed in France during this period, choreographers trained horses to perform graceful movements rather than to win races. French and Italian fencers such as the famed Girard Thibault, whose L’Académie de l’espée (“Fencing Academy”) appeared in 1628, thought of their activity more as an art form than as a combat. Northern Europeans emulated them. Humanistically inclined Englishmen and Germans admired the cultivated Florentine game of calcio, a form of football that stressed the good looks and elegant attire of the players. Within the world of sports, the emphasis on aesthetics, rather than achievement, was never stronger. Bulk buying Managing the cost of your grocery shops Sponsored By Barclays Learn More While the aesthetic element survives in sports such as figure skating, diving, and gymnastics, the modern emphasis is generally on quantified achievement. In fact, the transition from Renaissance to modern sports can be seen in a semantic shift; the word measure, which once connoted a sense of balance and proportion, began to refer almost exclusively to numerical measurements. Behind this epochal transition from Renaissance to modern sports lay the scientific developments that sustained the Industrial Revolution. Technicians sought to perfect equipment. Athletes trained systematically to achieve their physical maximum. New games, such as basketball, volleyball, and team handball, were consciously invented to specifications as if they were new products for the market. As early as the late 17th century, quantification became an important aspect of sports, and the cultural basis was created for the concept of the sports record. The word record, in the sense of an unsurpassed quantified achievement, appeared, first in English and then in other languages, late in the 19th century, but the concept went back nearly 200 years. The development of modern sports having begun in late 17th-century England, it was appropriate that the concept of the sports record also first appeared there. During the Restoration and throughout the 18th century, traditional pastimes such as stick fighting and bullbaiting, which the Puritans had condemned and driven underground, gave way to organized games such as cricket, which developed under the leadership of the Marylebone Cricket Club (founded 1787). Behind these changes lay a new conception of rationalized competition. Contests that seem odd to the modern mind, such as those in which the physically impaired were matched against children, were replaced by horse races in which fleeter steeds were handicapped, a notion of equality that led eventually to age and weight classes (though not to height classes) in many modern sports. Although the traditional sport of boxing flourished throughout the 18th century, it was not until 1743 that boxer-entrepreneur Jack Broughton formulated rules to rationalize and regulate the sport. The minimal controls on mayhem imposed by Broughton were strengthened in 1867 by the marquess of Queensberry. In the course of the 19th century, modern forms of British sports spread from the privileged classes to the common people. National organizations developed to standardize rules and regulations, to transform sporadic challenge matches into systematic league competition, to certify eligibility, and to register results. Rowing (crew), one of the first sports to assume its modern form, began to attract a following after the first boat race between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (1829) and the inauguration of the Henley Regatta (1839). “Athletics” became popular after Oxford and Cambridge held their first track-and-field meet in 1864. The Amateur Athletic Association, which emphasized track-and-field sports, was founded in 1880, the Amateur Rowing Association in 1882. Neither sport enjoyed the popularity of association football. The various versions of football played at elite schools such as Eton, Winchester, and Charterhouse were codified in the 1840s, and England’s Football Association was formed in 1863 to propagate what came to be known as “association football” (or simply “soccer”). The Rugby Football Union followed in 1871. Although the Football Association and most of its affiliated clubs were initially dominated by the middle and upper classes, soccer had definitely become “the people’s game” by the end of the century. For instance, Manchester United, one of Britain’s most storied teams, can trace its history to a club established by the city’s railroad workers in 1880. The entry of working-class athletes into soccer and other sports, as participants if not as administrators, inspired Britain’s middle and upper classes to formulate the amateur rule, which originally excluded not only anyone paid for athletic performances but also anyone who earned his living by manual labour of any sort. Globalization From the British Isles, modern sports (and the amateur rule) were diffused throughout the world. Sports that originally began elsewhere, such as tennis (which comes from Renaissance France), were modernized and exported as if they too were raw materials imported for British industry to transform and then export as finished goods. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the British expelled the French from Canada and from India and extended British rule over much of Africa. To the ends of the earth, cricket followed the Union Jack, which explains the game’s current popularity in Australia, South Asia, and the West Indies. Rugby football flourishes in other postcolonial cultures, such as New Zealand and South Africa, where the British once ruled. It was, however, association football’s destiny to become the world’s most widely played modern sport. Cricket and rugby seemed to require British rule in order to take root. Football needed only the presence of British economic and cultural influence. In Buenos Aires, for instance, British residents founded clubs for cricket and a dozen other sports, but it was the Buenos Aires Football Club, founded June 20, 1867, that kindled Argentine passions. In almost every instance, the first to adopt football were the cosmopolitan sons of local elites, many of whom had been sent to British schools by their Anglophile parents. Seeking status as well as diversion, middle-class employees of British firms followed the upper-class lead. From the gamut of games played by the upper and middle classes, the industrial workers of Europe and Latin America, like the indigenous population of Africa, appropriated football as their own. early baseball game early baseball game By the late 19th century, the United States had begun to rival Great Britain as an industrial power and as an inventor of modern sports. Enthusiasts of baseball denied its origins in British children’s games such as cat and rounders and concocted the myth of Abner Doubleday, who allegedly invented the game in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. A more plausible date for the transformation of cat and rounders into baseball is 1845, when a New York bank clerk named Alexander Cartwright formulated the rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. Even before the Civil War, the game had been taken over by urban workers such as the volunteer firemen who organized the New York Mutuals in 1857. By the time the National League was created in 1876, the game had spread from coast to coast. (It was not until the 1950s, however, that Major League Baseball planted its first franchises on the West Coast.) Basketball, invented in 1891 by James Naismith, and volleyball, invented four years later by William Morgan, are both quintessentially modern sports. Both were scientifically designed to fulfill a perceived need for indoor games during harsh New England winters. Football (soccer) is the world’s most popular ball game, but, wherever American economic and culture influence has been dominant, the attraction to baseball, basketball, and volleyball has tended to exceed that to football. Baseball, for example, boomed in Cuba, where Nemesio Guilló introduced the game to his countrymen in 1863, and in Japan, where Horace Wilson, an American educator, taught it to his Japanese students in 1873. Since basketball and volleyball were both invented under the auspices of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), it seemed reasonable for YMCA workers to take the games to China, Japan, and the Philippines, where the games took root early in the 20th century. It was, however, only in the post-World War II world that U.S. influence generally overwhelmed British; only then did basketball and volleyball become globally popular. American football, which now enjoys enclaves of enthusiasm in Great Britain and on the European continent, traces its origins to 1874, when a rugby team from Montreal’s McGill University traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to challenge a team of Harvard University students. Adopted by American students, rugby evolved into gridiron football, and in that form it became the leading intercollegiate game. Although the National Football League was established in 1920 (at $100 a franchise), the professional game was a relatively minor affair until after World War II, when football joined baseball and basketball to form the “trinity” of American sports. (Ice hockey, imported from Canada, runs a poor fourth in the race for fans of team sports.) In the dramatic global diffusion of modern sports, the French have also played a significant role. They left it to an Englishman, Walter Wingfield, to modernize the game of tennis, which originated in Renaissance France, but the French took the lead, early in the 19th century, in the development of the bicycle and in the popularization of cycling races. The first Paris–Rouen race took place in 1869; the Tour de France was inaugurated in 1903. The huge success of the latter inspired the Giro d’Italia (1909) and a number of other long-distance races. The French also left their mark on sports in another way. In 1894, at a conference held at the Sorbonne in Paris, Pierre de Coubertin selected the first members of a Comité International Olympique (International Olympic Committee; IOC) and arranged for the first Olympic Games of the modern era to be held in Athens in 1896. In 1904 Robert Guérin led a group of football (soccer) enthusiasts in forming the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), which England’s insular Football Association was at first too arrogant to join. The English name of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (1912; since 2001 known as the International Association of Athletics Federations; IAAF) suggests that the British were more cooperative in track-and-field sports than in football, but the IAAF’s founder was a Swedish industrialist, Sigfrid Edström. Japan, one of the few non-Western nations where traditional sports still rival modern ones in popularity, is also one of the few non-Western nations to contribute significantly to the repertory of modern sports. Judo, invented in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō in an effort to combine Western and Asian traditions, attracted European adherents early in the 20th century. In 1964 judo became an Olympic sport. From 1952, when the Soviet Union emerged from its self-imposed sports isolation, to 1991, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist, the communist societies of eastern Europe dominated the Olympic Games. In 1988, for instance, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), with a population of some 16 million, outscored the United States, 15 times its size. While anabolic steroids and other banned substances contributed to the East Germans’ triumph, credit must also be given to their relentless application of scientific methods in the search for the ultimate sports performance. The collapse of communism undermined state-sponsored elite sports in eastern Europe, but not before the nations of western Europe had begun to emulate their athletic adversaries by sponsoring scientific research, subsidizing elite athletes, and constructing vast training centres. In the 20th century, sports underwent social as well as spatial diffusion. After a long and frequently bitter struggle, African Americans, Australian Aboriginal people, “Cape Coloureds” (in South Africa), and other excluded racial and ethnic groups won the right to participate in sports. After a long and somewhat less-bitter struggle, women also won the right to compete in sports—such as rugby—that had been considered quintessentially masculine. While the British Isles may be considered the homeland of modern sports, modern physical education can be traced back to German and Scandinavian developments of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Men such as Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths in Germany and Per Henrik Ling in Sweden elaborated systems of gymnastic exercise that were eventually adopted by school systems in Britain, the United States, and Japan. These noncompetitive alternatives to modern sports also flourished in eastern Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among repressed ethnic peoples such as the Poles and Czechs, gymnastics became almost a way of life. For them, gymnastic festivals were grand occasions at which tens of thousands of disciplined men and women demonstrated nationalistic fervour. Gymnastic fervour was not, however, much in evidence among the world’s schoolchildren and college students as they encountered gymnastics in required physical-education classes. Calisthenic exercises designed to improve health and fitness were dull and dreary compared with the excitement of modern sports. Long before the end of the 20th century, even German educators had abandoned Leibeserziehung (“physical education”) in favour of Sportunterricht (“instruction in sports”). For young and for old, for better and for worse, sports are the world’s passion. Allen Guttmann Sociology of sports Although the German scholar Heinz Risse published Soziologie des Sports (“Sociology of Sports”) in 1921, it was not until 1966 that an international group of sociologists formed a committee and founded a journal to study the place of sports in society. Since then, many universities have established centres for research into the sociology of sports. Organizations such as the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport have proliferated. Prominent among the topics investigated by sports sociologists are socialization into and through sports; sports and national identity; globalization and sports processes; elite sports systems; labour migration and elite sports; mass media and the rise of professional sports; commercialization of sports; violence and sports; gender and sports; race, ethnicity, and sports; and human performance and the use of drugs. Socialization into and through sports Several questions are central to understanding the socialization into sports. How exactly are young people socialized to become involved in sports and to stay involved in them? Why do some continue to participate actively in sports throughout their lives while others are content to watch? Different questions arise when one asks how people are changed as a result of their socialization into sports. Why do some people find their primary identity as athletes, and what happens when injury, age, or loss of motivation brings their athletic careers to an end? More generally, what impact do sports have on an individual’s character, relationships, thoughts, and feelings? The socialization process Socialization is the process by which people become familiar with and adapt themselves to the interpersonal relationships of their social world. Through socialization, people develop ideas about themselves and about those with whom they interact. Inevitably, socialization is a two-way process that affects everyone to a greater or lesser degree. It takes place throughout one’s life, but it is during the early years that the most crucial phases occur. In these phases a person’s sense of self, social identity, and relationships with others are shaped. Play, games, contests, and sports have crucial and quite specific roles in the general socialization process. The sense of self is not natural; it develops through childhood socialization as a result of role-playing. Influenced by George Herbert Mead and Jean Piaget among others, sociologists have identified two stages in childhood socialization: a “play stage” and a “game stage.” In the play stage (more accurately, the stage of noncompetitive games), children play the role of a father, mother, teacher, firefighter, or athlete. Children learn the difference between their real selves and the parts they are playing. As they grow older, children shift from noncompetitive games (such as peekaboo and playing house) to contests (such as footraces and ball games). In the game stage (more accurately, the stage of competitive games), children encounter stricter rules and regulations. They develop a reflexive conception of the self and its position in relation to others, and they learn to see themselves as others see them. Through socialization with “significant others” and with the “generalized other,” children develop their sense of identity and self. They become self-conscious social actors. In most premodern societies, boys were encouraged by their families to compete in sports, which were presumed to prepare them for their adult roles as warriors and workers, while girls were encouraged to continue to play noncompetitive games that prepared them for motherhood. In modern societies, boys and young men continue to outnumber girls and young women involved in sports competition, but the gender gap has narrowed considerably. This has been true for the private clubs that organize European sports as well as for the interscholastic and intercollegiate teams that are a prominent feature of the North American sports landscape. The role of socializer into sports has been played by many actors, among them parents, older siblings, peers, teachers, coaches, and elite athletes appearing in the mass media. In the course of the 20th century, parents and older siblings became relatively less influential while coaches and elite athletes became more influential. In modern as in premodern societies, there is a tendency for sports participation to decline with age because of both the added responsibilities and time demands of paid employment and of parenthood and the physical decline of the body. Early socialization into sports is the best predictor of lifelong involvement in sports. Those who disliked sports as children are unlikely to become involved as adults, while those who loved sports are likely to participate throughout their lives. Elite athletes may be an exception to this rule. If pushed as children to compete nationally and internationally, they are liable to experience burnout and to abandon their sports careers before reaching adulthood. The value of socialization through sports has long been recognized, which is one reason for state support of physical education in the schools and adult-organized children’s sports programs. The effects of sports socialization, however, are not always what the socializers expect. They are in fact quite controversial. From the mid-19th to the early 21st century, sports were alleged to train young athletes in self-discipline, teamwork, leadership, and other highly prized traits and behaviours. Empirical research has shown that involvement in sports can also inculcate a socially destructive desire to win at all costs. Depending on the values of the socializing agents, sports can encourage young people to play fairly or to cheat. The evidence suggests that the propensity to cheat increases with age and the level of competition. Emotion and sports Another important aspect of the experience of sports is emotion, the feelings that reflect athletes’ self-evaluation or expectation of their performance and their perception of others’ evaluations and expectations. Some of the feelings expressed are anticipatory, prior to performing. Pregame “butterflies in the stomach” are as familiar to an athlete as stage fright is to an actor. Other feelings occur during and after the performance. All these feelings are “scripted” by the subculture of the sport in question. These scripts, or “feeling rules,” guide athletes as they manage their emotions, prompting, for instance, appropriate behaviour during pregame renditions of national anthems or during postgame victory celebrations. Norms for the display of emotions vary widely among sports. Rugby players and boxers are permitted to express their feelings with ostentatious displays that are impermissible for golfers and sumo wrestlers. The importance of the contest is another variable influencing the emotions involved. Exhibition matches evoke less-intense feelings than football’s World Cup championship game. The orchestration of emotions in sports begins with the arousal of expectations, provoking a diffuse emotional state that is then directed into a series of discrete and identifiable emotional displays. In other words, competitors become “psyched up.” In elite sports, players have already internalized the scripts that coaches call upon them to rehearse immediately before the contest and to adhere to during the contest. It is not, however, just the players who experience this scripting. Drawing upon fans’ previous experiences, media pundits and other “stage setters” also contribute to the management of the fans’ emotions. Cues provided by the stage setters prompt fans to express a variety of emotions throughout a game. These emotions range from passionate identification with one’s representative team and with one’s fellow fans to hatred for the opposing team and its misguided supporters. Fans feel despair when an idolized player is injured; they feel ecstasy when a last-minute goal transforms humiliating defeat into triumphant victory. While there may be a scripting or an orchestration of the emotions, individuals vary in the degree to which they internalize and follow scripts. Despite such individual variations, rules do structure the emotional experience of sports subcultures. These emotional processes, which help define roles of players, coaches, and fans, also help forge the link between sports and national identity. Sports and national identity The formation of national identity In addition to the social practices that contribute actively to a nation’s image, national cultures are characterized by competing discourses through which people construct meanings that influence their self-conception and behaviour. These discourses often take the form of stories that are told about the nation in history books, novels, plays, poems, the mass media, and popular culture. Memories of shared experiences—not only triumphs but also sorrows and disasters—are recounted in compelling ways that connect a nation’s present with its past. The construction of a national identity in large part involves reference to an imagined community based on a range of characteristics thought to be shared by and specific to a set of people. Stories and memories held in common contribute to the description of those characteristics and give meaning to the notion of nation and national identity. Presented in this way, nationalism can be used to legitimize, or justify, the existence and activities of modern territorial states. Sports, which offer influential representations of individuals and communities, are especially well placed to contribute to this process of identity formation and to the invention of traditions. Sports are inherently dramatic (from Greek dran, “to act, do, perform”). They are physical contests whose meanings can be “read” and understood by everyone. Ordinary citizens who are indifferent to national literary classics can become emotionally engaged in the discourses promoted in and through sports. Sometimes the nationhood of countries is viewed as indivisible from the fortunes of the national teams of specific sports. Uruguay, which hosted and won the first World Cup football championship in 1930, and Wales, where rugby union is closely woven with religion and community to reflect Welsh values, are prime examples. In both cases national identity has been closely tied to the fortunes of male athletes engaged in the “national sport.” England’s eclipse as a cricket power is often thought, illogically, to be symptomatic of a wider social malaise. These examples highlight the fact that a sport can be used to support, or undermine, a sense of national identity. Clifford Geertz’s classic study of Balinese cockfighting, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1972), illustrates another case in point. Although Balinese culture is based on the avoidance of conflict, men’s identification with their birds allows for the vicarious expression of hostility. Patriot games By the beginning of the final decades of the 19th century, sports had become a form of “patriot games” in which particular views of national identity were constructed. Both established and outsider groups used and continue to use sports to represent, maintain, and challenge identities. In this way sports can either support or undermine hegemonic social relations. The interweaving of sports and national identity politics can be illustrated with several telling examples. In 1896 a team of Japanese schoolboys soundly defeated a team of Americans from the Yokohama Athletic Club in a series of highly publicized baseball games. Their victories, “beating them at their own game,” were seen as a national triumph and as a repudiation of the American stereotype of the Japanese as myopic weaklings. Similarly, the “bodyline” controversy of the 1932–33 cricket Test series between Australia and England exemplifies the convergence of sports and politics. At issue were the violent tactics employed by the English bowlers, who deliberately threw at the bodies of the Australian batsmen in order to injure or intimidate them. The bowlers’ “unsporting” behaviour raised questions about fair play, good sportsmanship, and national honour. It also jeopardized Australia’s political relationship with Great Britain. So great was the resulting controversy that the Australian and British governments became involved. Arguably, one consequence was the forging of a more independent attitude in Australians’ dealings with the British in the political, economic, and cultural realms. The Soviet Union’s military suppression of reformist efforts to create “socialism with a human face” in Hungary (1956) and in Czechoslovakia (1968) were followed by famous symbolic reenactments of the conflicts in the form of an Olympic water-polo match (U.S.S.R. versus Hungary) and an ice hockey encounter (U.S.S.R. versus Czechoslovakia). In both cases, sports were invested with tremendous political significance, and the Soviet team’s defeat was seen as a vindication of national identity. National character In each of these examples, a historical legacy was invoked, past glories or travesties were emphasized, and the players were faced with maintaining or challenging a set of invented traditions. This link between sports, national culture, and identity can be extended further. Some sports are seen to encompass all the qualities of national character. In the value system of upper-class Englishmen, for example, cricket embodies the qualities of fair play, valour, graceful conduct, and steadfastness in the face of adversity. Seen to represent the essence of England, the game is a focus of national identification in the emotions of upper-class males. Moreover, just as Englishness is represented as an indefinable essence too subtle for foreigners to comprehend, so too are the mysteries of cricket deemed to be inscrutable to the outsider. In a similar manner, bullfighting has been portrayed in the visual and the verbal arts as a material embodiment of the Spanish soul, Gaelic football is thought to be an expression of an authentic Irishness, and sumo wrestling is said to represent the indefinable uniqueness of Japanese culture (which is why foreign-born sumo wrestlers are almost never elevated to the sport’s highest rank of yokozuna). Traditions and myths National culture and identity are also represented by an emphasis on origins, continuity, tradition, and timelessness. For most English people, for example, the origins of their culture and national identity seem to be lost in antiquity. Englishness is taken for granted as the result of centuries of uninterrupted tradition. This emphasis on continuity is strikingly evident in sports contests between nations. Accordingly, when teams from England and Scotland compete, they are characterized as “auld enemies.” That political institutions are also imbued with a sense of venerable tradition is easily exemplified in the pageantry that surrounds the English monarchy. Yet the traditions associated with both the monarchy and sports are not as old as claimed. Indeed, both appear to be based on foundational myths—that is, on myths that seek to locate the origins of a nation, a people, or a national character much earlier in time and place than the evidence supports. Bulk buying Managing the cost of your grocery shops Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Baseball, which for a century was considered to be the "national game" of the United States, is a case in point. Instead of tracing the origins of the game to its English roots in children’s games such as cat and rounders, Americans accepted the addled recollections of a lone octogenarian and credited Abner Doubleday with having invented a game that he may never have played. Similarly, Italians use the word calcio to describe the sport known to the rest of the world as “association football,” as “soccer,” or simply as “football” (or “fútbol” or “voetbal” or another cognate). The use of calcio implies that the origins of modern football can be traced to Renaissance Italy. Sumo provides another striking example of invented tradition. The colourful traditional costume worn by sumo officials suggests that the sport has evolved almost unchanged since the 11th century, but the costume was actually devised in 1909 during a period of intense nationalism. The role sports play in the interaction of culture and national identity is sometimes viewed as inherently conservative. Some believe that the association of sports with nationalism goes beyond mere patriotism and becomes chauvinistic and xenophobic. The behaviour of football hooligans at international matches lends support to the argument. On the other hand, sports also have contributed to liberal nationalist political struggles. One frequently cited example is the 19th-century Slavic gymnastics movement known as Sokol (“Falcon”). Gymnastic clubs in what is now the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland were in the forefront of the struggle for national liberation from Austrian and Russian rule. A similar role was played by Algerian football clubs when they became centres of resistance to French colonialism. Sports—through the use of nostalgia, mythology, invented traditions, flags, anthems, and ceremonies—contribute greatly to the quest for national identity. Sports serve to nurture, refine, and develop the sense that nations have of themselves. Yet, in the context of global sports, this role has become increasingly contradictory. In introducing people to other societies, global sports strengthen cosmopolitanism even as they feed ethnic defensiveness and exclusiveness. For example, the development of cricket in South Asia reflects that region’s imperial past and postcolonial present, but the game has taken on uniquely Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan attributes far removed from the pastoral values associated with the English village green. Globalization and sports processes The globalization of sports is part of a much larger—and much more controversial—globalization process. Examined historically and analytically, this larger globalization process can be understood as the development of a worldwide network of interdependencies. The 20th century witnessed the advent of a global economy, a transnational cosmopolitan culture, and a variety of international social movements. As a result of modern technology, people, money, images, and ideas are able to traverse the globe with tremendous speed. The development of modern sports was influenced by the interwoven economic, political, social, and cultural patterns of globalization. These patterns both enable and constrain people’s actions, which means that there are winners and losers in the diffusion of modern sports from Europe and North America to the rest of the world. Western domination The emergence and diffusion of modern sports in the 19th and 20th centuries are clearly part of the larger process of globalization. The globalization of sports has been characterized by the creation of national and international sports organizations, the standardization and worldwide acceptance of the rules and regulations for individual and team sports, the development of regularly scheduled international competitions, and the establishment of special competitions, such as the Olympic Games and the various world championships, that aspire to involve athletes from nations in all corners of the globe. The emergence and diffusion of modern sports is bound up in complex networks and interdependency chains that are marked by unequal power relations. The world can be understood as an interdependent whole, where groups constantly compete for dominant (or less-subordinate) positions. In sports as in other social realms, Europe and North America have been hegemonic. Modern sports are to an overwhelming degree Western sports. As modern sports spread throughout the world, the myriad traditional sports of Asia, Africa, and South America were marginalized. Sports such as Japanese kemari and Afghan buzkashi survive as folkloric curiosities. No master plan has governed the process of sports globalization. Throughout the period of Western imperialism that reached its apogee in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, colonized peoples were often forced to adopt Western sports. (This was especially true at missionary schools.) More often than not, however, politically and economically colonized peoples were motivated by emulation. Anglophile Argentines formed football teams not because they were coerced to play but rather because football was the game played by the English whom they admired. More recently, however, as transnational corporations have sought to sell every kind of product to every reachable consumer, modern sports have been systematically marketed to the entire world, not only as sources of pleasure but also as signs of distinction, prestige, and power. Bulk buying Managing the cost of your grocery shops Sponsored By Barclays Learn More Western values and capitalist marketing, advertising, and consumption have influenced the ways people throughout the world construct, use, represent, imagine, and feel about their bodies. Unquestionably, there is a political economy at work in the production and consumption of global sports and leisure products that has resulted in the relative ascendancy of a narrow selection of Western sports, but non-Western sports and attitudes toward the physical self have not completely disappeared. Not only have they survived, but some of them, such as the martial arts and yoga, have also found a prominent place in the sports and body cultures of Europe and North America. Non-Western resistance It is possible, therefore, to overstate the extent to which the West has dominated in terms of global sports structures, organizations, and ideologies. As noted, non-Western cultures resist and reinterpret Western sports and maintain, foster, and promote on a global scale their own indigenous recreational pursuits. The popularity of Asian martial arts in Europe and the Americas is one sign of this. In other words, global sports processes involve multidirectional movements of people, practices, customs, and ideas that reflect a series of shifting power balances. These processes have unintended as well as intended consequences. While the intentional actions of transnational agencies or corporations such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) or Nike, Inc., are probably more significant in the short term, over the longer term the unintentional, relatively autonomous transnational practices predominate. The 19th-century diffusion of football (soccer) is one example of this sort of globalization. The 20th-century diffusion of surfboarding from Hawaii is another. Bulk buying Managing the cost of your grocery shops Sponsored By Barclays Learn More In sum, the speed, scale, and volume of sports development can be imagined as eddies within the broader global flows of people, technology, finance, images, and ideologies that are dominated by Europe and North America (whose elites are predominantly white males). There are, however, signs that global processes may be leading to the diminution of Western power in a variety of contexts, including sports. Sports may become increasingly contested, with Asian and African cultures challenging 19th- and 20th-century hegemonic masculine notions regarding the content, meaning, control, organization, and ideology of sports. Moreover, global flows are simultaneously increasing the varieties of body cultures and identities available to people in local cultures. Global sports, then, seem to be leading not only to the reduction in contrasts between societies but also to the simultaneous emergence of new varieties of body cultures and identities. Elite sports systems Cold War competition That international sports success in the late 20th century involved a contest between systems located within a global context was vividly displayed in the sporting struggles of the Cold War era. From the 1950s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, there was intense athletic rivalry between the Soviet bloc on the one hand and the United States and its allies on the other. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, sports victories were touted as proof of ideological superiority. A partial list of the most memorable Soviet-Western showdowns might include the Soviet Union’s disputed victory over the U.S. basketball team in the final seconds of the gold medal game of the 1972 Summer Olympics; Canada’s last-minute goal against the Soviet Union in the concluding game of their 1972 eight-game ice hockey series; the defeat of the veteran Soviet ice hockey team by a much younger American squad at the 1980 Winter Olympics; and a number of track-and-field showdowns between East and West Germany. Success in these encounters depended on several factors, among them the identification and recruitment of human resources (including coaches and trainers as well as athletes), innovations in coaching and training, advances in sports medicine and sports psychology, and—not surprisingly—the expenditure of a significant portion of the gross domestic product to support these systems. While neglecting the infrastructure for recreational sports for ordinary citizens, the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) sought to enhance their international prestige by investing huge sums in elite sports. At universities and sports centres in Moscow, Leipzig, Bucharest, and elsewhere, Soviet-bloc countries developed an elaborate sports-medicine and sports-science program (allied in the case of East Germany with a state-sponsored drug regime). For a time, the Soviet-bloc countries were outcompeting their Western counterparts, but the major Western sporting nations began to create similar state-sponsored programs. Poorer nations, with the notable exception of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, were for the most part unable or unwilling to dedicate scarce economic resources to the athletic “arms race.” As a result, they had difficulty competing on the world stage. Order of nations Even after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, an international order persists in which nations can be grouped into core, semiperipheral, and peripheral blocs, not by geography but rather by politics, economics, and culture. The core of the sports world comprises the United States, Russia, western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Japan, South Korea, Cuba, China, Brazil, and several of the former Soviet-bloc states can be classified as semiperipheral sports powers. On the periphery are most Asian, African, and Latin American nations. The core may be challenged on the field of play in one sport or another (East African runners dominate middle-distance races), but control over the ideological and economic resources associated with sports still tends to lie in the West, where the IOC and the headquarters of nearly all the international sports federations are located. Despite their relative weakness in international competition, noncore countries have used regularly recurring sports festivals, such as the Asian Games, to solidify regional and national identities and to enhance international recognition and prestige. Despite programs such as Olympic Solidarity, which provides aid and technical assistance to poorer nations, material resources still tend to be concentrated in the core nations, while those on the periphery lack the means to develop and retain their athletic talent. They lose many of their best athletes to more powerful nations that can offer better training facilities, stiffer competition, and greater financial rewards. The more commercialized the sport, the greater the “brawn drain.” At the turn of the 21st century, Western nations recruited not only sports scientists and coaches from the former Soviet bloc but also athletic talent from Africa and South America. This was especially true in sports such as football, where players were lured by the lucrative contracts offered by European and Japanese clubs. Noncore leagues remain in a dependent relationship with the dominant European core. In other sports, such as track and field and baseball, this drain of talent flows to the United States. Despite some competition from Japan, the West also remains overwhelmingly dominant in terms of the design, production, and marketing of sportswear and equipment. Labour migration and elite sports Labour migration is an important and established feature of the sporting “global village.” While this movement of workers primarily involves athletes, it also includes coaches, officials, administrators, and sports scientists. Although migrant labour has been a feature of the sports process since ancient times, the phenomenon increased in complexity and intensity during the last decades of the 20th century. This acceleration is closely tied to globalization processes. Intracontinental and intercontinental migration The migration of athletes and others involved in sports occurs at three levels: within nations, between nations located on the same continent, and between nations located in different continents and hemispheres. Extensive migration within nations has been common since the beginnings of modern sports in the 18th century, but intercontinental migration was infrequent before the 20th century. Recent examples of intracontinental migration include the flow of baseball players from the Dominican Republic to the United States and of eastern European football, ice hockey, and basketball players to western Europe. Coaches in these and other sports have joined the exodus. Availing themselves of their new freedom of movement, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Romanians have moved west. Eastward expansion of the European Union, whose rules have further liberalized the labour market, has accelerated this migration. Movement of sports labour also occurs between North America, Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia in many sports, including football (soccer), baseball, and basketball. Canadians play ice hockey in Britain, Germany, France, and Switzerland; conversely, there is a flow of sports labour in the opposite direction when North American ice hockey teams acquire Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian players. American universities actively recruit Europeans to participate in track and field, football (soccer), rugby, basketball, and swimming, while large numbers of Africans have competed at the college level in the United States in basketball and track-and-field sports. What had begun as the unilateral movement of American basketball players to European professional leagues in the 1960s became a two-way flow by the end of the century, and the number of international players in the National Basketball Association increased dramatically. Similarly, while American baseball players had for decades competed on Japanese teams, beginning in the 1990s a few elite Japanese players made an impact on Major League Baseball. Australian, Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, and South African players have for decades figured prominently in English cricket. The migration of athletes between nations is sometimes complicated by the imposition by professional leagues and associations of quotas that limit the number of foreign players a team can field. In some cases these restrictions are circumvented when a player is able to claim ancestral links to another country, as Diego Maradona did when he moved from Argentina to Italy. Seasonal and transitory migration In specific sports, such as cricket and rugby, labour migration has a seasonal pattern, with the Northern and Southern hemispheres scheduling two different seasons of play. One consequence is that the natural rhythm of the traditional sporting calendar (most often governed by climate) has diminished in importance. In other sports, participants experience an even more transitory form of migration because their “workplace” constantly changes as the venue for competition shifts. Examples include the experience of European, American, and African track-and-field athletes on Europe’s Grand Prix circuit and that of European and North American skiers competing in World Cup Alpine skiing. Occasionally seasonal and transitory migration patterns interweave, as they do for golf and tennis players. Tennis stars crisscross the globe in pursuit of Grand Slam titles and points that determine their world ranking. These migratory forays tend to last no more then eight days per tournament venue. In this respect, tennis players and golfers are probably the ultimate nomads of the sports migration process, with constantly shifting workplaces and places of residence. Migrant athletes have generally improved their lives, experiencing social as well as spatial mobility, but they have also experienced economic exploitation, dislocation, and culture shock. Gender relations play a significant role in contouring a migrant athlete’s life. The disadvantages of sports migration have been greater for female athletes. Although women now travel more frequently and in greater numbers than in the past, men continue to move more freely (and to be paid more generously). This pattern results from social structures that continue to assume that women are solely responsible for domestic matters and child care. Factors affecting migration As with broader global processes, an economic analysis is a necessary but insufficient explanation of sports migration. The migrant trails of world sports are constructed by shifting sets of multilayered interdependencies that include not only economic but also political, historical, geographic, social, and cultural factors. As with global sports in general, a broad approach must be taken to make sense of these migration processes. The experience of migrant athletes once they arrive in a host country (along with the impact of their presence on the hosts) is determined by a wide range of factors, including the residual impact of colonial heritages and cultural traditions; cultural and legal encouragement or discouragement of migration; economic, social, and cultural dependency; and political changes within and between societies and power blocs. A number of processes that are more immediately related to sports are also involved. Special status is ascribed to particular sporting traditions and particular leagues. Young cricket players are often eager to bowl and bat in England; aspiring football players dream of a career in Germany’s Bundesliga. Ethnic and racial stereotyping, which categorizes athletes as desirable or undesirable candidates for recruitment, also plays a role. Other factors influencing migration include the political, economic, and playing ambitions of individual clubs, leagues, and national associations; the role of agents and coaching networks; and the resources available for the identification, development, and exploitation of new talent sources. All of these factors will influence the speed, scale, and volume of future sports migration. Joseph Anthony Maguire Allen Guttmann Mass media and the rise of professional sports The marriage of media and sports The relationship between mass media and sports has profoundly influenced both institutions. From the late 18th century onward, this relationship has passed through a series of stages, the first of which was parallel development, with the mass media reaching a broader audience through new technologies and market growth while sports were attracting a growing base of paying spectators. Next, their trajectories began to intersect—the commercial mass media (especially after their emergence in electronic form) increasingly viewed sports coverage as an inexpensive way of supplying much-needed content. Sports were correctly perceived as ideal for capturing audiences for advertisers. Public or state media also recognized sporting events as opportunities to reaffirm national culture and to bolster patriotism. As the economic infrastructure of sports developed to the level of a bona fide industry, sports entrepreneurs began to see the mass media as important for generating interest among spectators and sponsors. Finally, by the late 20th century, mass media and elite sports formed a marriage of convenience, becoming in this last stage so economically interdependent as to be virtually inseparable. It is now, for example, impossible to imagine the continued existence of professional sports—football, basketball, gridiron football, or baseball—without billion-dollar broadcast rights and saturation coverage in the sports pages. It is also difficult to suggest another cultural form capable of attracting billions of viewers to watch live events (such as the Olympic Games opening ceremony or football’s World Cup final). Media magnates such as Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Silvio Berlusconi, along with the Walt Disney Company, have developed this logic of convergence to the highest level, becoming the owners of sports teams—the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers baseball teams, football’s AC Milan, and the National Hockey League’s Mighty Ducks, respectively. This coming together of media and sports, however, can reinstate older practices, with the costs to media corporations of acquiring broadcast rights and sports clubs offset by reintroducing the charge for watching that home viewers previously evaded. The introduction of cable, satellite, and microwave delivery systems has enabled broadcasters to exact payment for access to 24-hour sports channels or, in an even more direct revival of turnstile arrangements, for access to pay-per-view live broadcasts of especially popular sports events such as championship boxing matches. Sports bars and other entertainment venues with multiple television screens also offer a more public way of watching sports, just as large screens are now a feature at most major sports stadiums. For those who prefer to stay at home, however, the spreading availability of the Internet has created many new ways of connecting sports fans, media companies, sponsors, and advertisers. For example, all the major American media companies now have a substantial online presence. Cyberspace is the latest site for the intimate relationship between the mass media and professional sports to be consummated. Evolution of sportswriting Tracing the rise of the mass media and professional sports demonstrates constant change and innovation in the presentation of sports in the media. The pace of this change has accelerated with the intensification of competition between media organizations, between different sports, and between sports and other forms of leisure entertainment. The print sports media have evolved far beyond their original 18th-century role of announcing imminent sports events and recording their outcomes. Beginning in the early 19th century with the boxing reports of England’s Pierce Egan, newspapers transformed their sports coverage from factual statements of results to expansive, dramatic, and linguistically innovative accounts of sporting events. By the end of the century, the popularity of these sports stories among (mostly male) readers had prompted the growth of sports desks staffed by specialized journalists. They produced sports pages, often conveniently located at the back of the newspaper, that provided readers with abundant, although largely sanitized, information about athletes and their performances. Sportswriters tended to concentrate on the anticipation, atmospheric description, and postmortem dissection of major sporting occasions. Newspaper proprietors quickly discovered that the back page was often consulted before the weightier matters of state at the front of the newspaper. The importance of sports for newspaper circulation can be illustrated by the placement, as a lure for its readers, of a detailed horse-racing form in The Morning Star, the long-running (but now defunct) British Communist Party newspaper. The space devoted to sports coverage in the daily press increased to the point where, by the middle of the 20th century, even the august New York Times was producing bulky sports sections. By that time the public’s appetite for sports news was so great that daily newspapers exclusively dedicated to sports had sprung up in many countries. The most famous of them, L’Équipe (Paris), traces its origins to the beginning of the 20th century. A host of sportswriting styles and genres are available to readers. Some of these are of long standing—for example, the “morning after” sports report detailing the outcomes and the main features of a sports contest. Others are of more recent invention, such as “soft news” and celebrity sports gossip. Journalists have become increasingly enthusiastic about probing sports scandals. Sports fans have been enlightened about official corruption (such as that surrounding the successful bid by Salt Lake City, Utah, to host the 2002 Winter Olympics), performance-enhancing drugs, and off-field violence committed by athletes and fans. There is also considerable space in the print media devoted to in-depth profiles of athletes and the examination of sports issues, some of which are collected in books such as the Best American Sports Writing series. In book publishing there are fictions (e.g., Henry de Montherlant’s Les Olympiques [1938], Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner [1959]); biographies and autobiographies (usually ghostwritten) of prominent athletes (e.g., Muhammad Ali, Pelé, Martina Navratilova, Michael Jordan); reflections on the experience of sports fandom (e.g., Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch [1992]); various coaching manuals and guides; and an increasing body of academic literature on sports. These and other forms of writing contribute to (and are a result of) the prominence of sports in the contemporary economy and society. Photography, radio, and television However evocative sportswriting might be, it lacks the immediate impact of a striking visual sports image. As newspapers have developed their design appeal, sports photography has enhanced the attractiveness of the sports pages and of general current-affairs magazines such as Time, Newsweek, Paris-Match, and Der Spiegel. In the thousands of specialized magazines devoted entirely to sports, verbal texts and visual images are appealingly combined with an eye to the adult male sports fans who are the magazines’ principal readers. One consequence of this focus on male readers is that magazines such as Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News provide minimal coverage of women’s sports (and tend to emphasize the erotic appeal of female athletes when they do allot space to women’s sports). Despite the convenience of sports journalism in the print media, the reader’s experience is—by definition—mediated. It still lacks a vibrant sense of immediacy. The diffusion of radio technology throughout Europe and North America in the 1920s allowed fans, absent from the game for whatever reason (distance, scheduling, venue capacity, cost), to listen in to play-by-play descriptions of events. A new market developed around those who tuned in to sports and hearkened to the sponsors’ and advertisers’ messages. Once radio broadcasting had been established, the next technological innovation—television—added the crucial visual to the existing audio dimension of live sports spectatorship. Television provides an unprecedented opportunity for vicarious experience. Initially, in the 1950s, those who staged, organized, and performed at sports events feared that the availability of games on television might keep fans from attending, especially if they could receive these live television sports broadcasts “free-to-air”—that is, for only the cost of the reception equipment and electrical power. The doubts quickly disappeared when it was discovered that television also had the capacity to generate legions of new sports fans. The enthusiastic response to sports programming provided sports organizations with a powerful new revenue stream: the sale of broadcast rights. By the late 20th century, as the cultural economy became increasingly important and the need to attract consumers to converging broadcast, computer, and telecommunications technologies became ever more urgent, entrepreneurs sold audiovisual access to their performances at vastly inflated prices. It has been estimated that the global value of broadcast income to the IOC for the Summer and Winter Games of 1996 through 2008 will exceed $10 billion. For televised sports, technical and presentational complexity has increased alongside the cost, scope, and density of coverage. From a single, static camera attempting to capture sports events as if from the perspective of a well-positioned spectator at the venue, the number and capabilities of cameras and microphones have vastly increased. At contemporary major sports events, multiple cameras are positioned to capture the action from a variety of angles (including overhead), distances (from extreme close-ups to panoramas), and speeds (from super slow motion to time-lapse speed). Highly sensitive directional microphones and “lipstick” cameras and microphones placed on sports participants or their equipment take the spectator ever closer to the play. Electronic sports will move far beyond today’s relatively passive viewing when home stadium and virtual-reality technology are introduced. The first will allow viewers to make their own production choices of camera angle and displayed sports data; the second will so immerse viewers in the sports action that they will feel like participants. This heightened “spectacularization” of the electronic sports media is designed to maintain the interest of sports fans and to attract detached viewers seeking sensation and stimulation. In this way sports will remain central to the economics of the media. When combined with the treatment of sports in other media—from Hollywood films such as Field of Dreams (1989) and Any Given Sunday (1999) to the compact-disc recording of Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and José Carreras singing at the opening ceremonies of football’s 1990 World Cup—the vibrancy and inventiveness of the sports media are readily apparent. This popularity and adaptability have ensured that media companies will continue to invest a major share of their resources in one of their most valuable commercial assets—sports. Commercialization of sports Modern sports and modern mass media are both multibillion-dollar businesses. Elite sports cannot function as they do without the mass media to publicize and underwrite them. The huge market for sports equipment and team-related merchandise is to a large extent sustained by the media’s 24-hour-a-day sports coverage, and the economic infrastructure of the mass media depends to a considerable extent on the capacity of sports to create large, loyal cohorts of readers, listeners, viewers, and interactive consumers. This dynamic synergy between sports and the mass media is not without its problems. The mass media have enormous influence not only on the way that sports events are staged but also on when they take place. When Olympic sprinters run their races at 5 am so that New Yorkers can watch them in prime time, as happened at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, the media have clearly exercised a degree of influence that was unthinkable in the days of Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin. That the media’s economic interests are uppermost is evidenced by the advertisements that continually interrupt the action of sports events covered by commercial television networks. Not surprisingly, there is an occasional backlash against the symbiosis of sports and the media. Some athletes and spectators resentfully accuse the media (especially television) of “taking over sports” and altering their ethos, rules, and structure. Evidence of concern about the economic power of the mass media was provided in 1999 when the British government decided to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB, which owns the broadcast rights to English Premier League association football, from acquiring control of Manchester United, one of the world’s richest and best-known sports “brands.” There is also some evidence that the commercial interests of individual media companies, especially when monopolistic, may damage the crucial requirement for uncertain outcomes in sports leagues and tournaments and create a popular perception that sports contests have been “fixed” to further the interests of media corporations. With various abuses in mind, some critics have argued that sports need to be monitored by governments, elite sports bodies, and fan organizations in order, ironically, to secure their long-term commercial value. Corporate sponsorship is one key area where the “brand value” of sports is central to the relationship between mass media and sports. Corporate sponsorship, which has long since replaced the aristocratic patrons who once staged sports events, has enabled sports organizations and competitions to be funded while expanding brand recognition, identification, and loyalty for the sponsors. Naming-rights sponsorship for events and facilities and the prominent placement of the sponsors’ logos where spectators cannot help but see them are extremely valuable marketing tools for which sponsors are prepared to pay enormous sums. In 1997, for example, when the newly elected British Labour government attempted to introduce a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship in sports, it was delayed by the fact that the revenue from advertisements and sponsorships was in excess of £300 million a year. Linked to sponsorship is merchandising, which enables sports, sponsors, and companies to derive additional income and exposure by selling to sports fans goods and services that identify the fans as supporters both of teams (such as football shirts) and of sponsors (through displaying, for example, the Nike sportswear company’s “swoosh” or the distinctive stripes of Adidas). Additional impetus to this marketing effort is bestowed by paying star athletes, such as basketball player Michael Jordan or tennis player Anna Kournikova, to actively endorse branded sports products or merely to display or use them. The key to the commercialization of sports through sponsorship, celebrity endorsement, and merchandising is, of course, the mass media, whose astonishing capacity to showcase sports events and individual athletes has propelled sports contests from local to global phenomena. The story of the development and evolution of modern sports is therefore one in which the mass media are among the essential agents of change across the whole field of sports culture. Economically, sports are intimately and enduringly married to the mass media—with no prospect of a divorce. David Charles Rowe Allen Guttmann Violence and sports On-field violence Violence can be defined as any interpersonal behaviour intended to cause physical harm or mental distress. Most discussions of sports-related violence concentrate on physical harm—i.e., bodily injury. Setting aside the question of motivation, most psychologists approach the study of sports-related physical violence from a behaviouristic perspective. They infer the intention of assailants from their observable actions. In a sports context, aggression, which is often discussed as if it were synonymous with violence, can best be defined as an unprovoked physical or verbal assault. Aggressiveness, therefore, is the propensity to commit such an assault. In attempting to map patterns of violence, sociologists such as Michael Smith have developed a sports-violence typology in which “brutal body contact” is seen as integral to some sports. This contact conforms to the rules of the sport and is completely legitimate even when the same sort of behaviour outside the sports context is defined as criminal. Examples of legitimate violence can be found in rugby and gridiron football and in boxing, wrestling, and Asian martial arts. Participants in these sports, by the very act of taking part, have implicitly accepted the inevitability of rough contact. They have implicitly consented to the probability of minor injury and the possibility of serious injury. They cannot, however, reasonably be said to have agreed to injuries sustained from physical assaults that violate the written and unwritten rules of the sport. Although violence of this latter sort is definitely illegitimate and sometimes illegal, it has proved very difficult for injured athletes to find redress in the courts. Judges and juries are reluctant to convict athletes of criminal behaviour committed in the course of a sports contest, and they are equally reluctant to convict coaches, schools, and sports leagues of negligence. “Borderline violence” consists of behaviours that violate the official rules of the sport but that are accepted by players and fans alike as a legitimate part of the game. Such behaviour—a fistfight in ice hockey or an intentional foul in association football’s penalty zone—is rarely subject to legal proceedings and tends to be dealt with by penalties imposed by referees, umpires, or league administrators. A memorable example of this occurred in 1997 when the Nevada Boxing Commission censured and banned heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson for biting his opponent. More-extreme rule infractions—i.e., those that violate not only the formal rules of the sport but also the law of the land—elicit a harsher formal response, especially when the violence results in serious injury. High or late tackles in gridiron football usually create serious outrage and have on occasion led to the strict imposition of a lifetime ban, but recourse to the law in cases of quasi-criminal violence is infrequent. Finally, Smith’s typology includes what he termed “criminal violence”—that is, behaviour so egregious that it is handled legally from the outset because it is not considered part of the game. While legal scholars have sought to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate sports violence, social psychologists and sociologists have investigated the causes of sports-related violence. Here the discussion revolves around broader nature-nurture debates and the role that sports are believed to play in society. Those who believe that aggression and violence are “natural” tend to view them as instinctive and inevitable aspects of human behaviour. From the perspective of Konrad Lorenz and others in this camp, sports are seen as a form of catharsis; they allow for the safe and channeled release of the aggression that is part of every person’s instinctive makeup. Most sports sociologists, however, challenge this hypothesis and believe instead that research confirms that violence and aggression are socially learned. This latter view is supported by the fact that the levels and types of sports-related violence vary greatly from culture to culture, which strongly suggests that they are not the result of some universal human nature. Canadian ice hockey, for example, is more violent in some respects than its Scandinavian counterpart. The reason for this is that Canadian ice hockey provides a subcultural context in which boys and young men are introduced to highly aggressive behaviour. In this and in many other sports subcultures, brutal body contact and physical assault are part and parcel of what it means to be a man. Conformity to the code of toughness certifies a player’s masculinity and confers upon him honour and prestige. Those who fail to meet such expectations drop out of the subculture or are subject to peer sanctions. Joseph Anthony Maguire Spectator violence Sports-related spectator violence is often more strongly associated with a social group than with the specific nature of the sport itself. Roman gladiatorial combats were, for example, history’s most violent sport, but the closely supervised spectators, carefully segregated by social class and gender, rarely rioted. In modern times, football (soccer) is certainly less violent than rugby, but soccer hooliganism is a worldwide phenomenon, while spectator violence associated with the more upper-class but rougher sport of rugby has been minimal. Similarly, crowds at baseball games have been more unruly than the generally more affluent and better-educated fans of gridiron football, although the latter is unquestionably the rougher sport. Efforts by the police to curb sports-related violence are often counterproductive, because the young working-class males responsible for most of the trouble are frequently hostile to the authorities. Media coverage of disturbances can also act to exaggerate their importance and incite the crowd behaviour that the media then simultaneously condemn and sensationalize. The most effective means to reduce the level of spectator violence is also the simplest: abolish "terraces," where spectators stand, and provide seats for all ticket holders. Allen Guttmann Gender and sports With few exceptions, modern sports were devised by and for men, with the content, meaning, and significance of the contests reflecting male values, strengths, and interests. The 19th-century institutionalization of modern sports involved changes in personality, body deportment, and social interaction; the result was a body culture that valued youthful masculinity. A great deal of research has focused on the role sports play in the making of modern masculinity. For young men and adolescent boys, the path to manhood appears to be reinforced and confirmed by participation in sports. In some respects this can be a positive relationship. As the consideration of sports-related violence indicates, however, sports do not simply “build character,” as Victorian educators and 20th-century coaches were prone to assert; sports also create characters. Some of these characters are socially responsible role models; others can develop a tough masculine style that aggravates broader social problems such as domestic violence. Male sports heroes have at times enjoyed certain social privileges, including a tolerance of antisocial behaviour based on the rationalization that “boys will be boys.” Some sports cultures generate forms of behaviour that are openly antagonistic toward people of different sexual orientation. Gender discrimination can also take less-extreme forms. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, for example, it was assumed that cheerleading was the most appropriate way for girls to contribute to sports. Although in some respects modern sports remain the male preserve they were in the Victorian era, male privilege has never gone unchallenged. Many upper-middle-class women played golf, tennis, and field hockey; a few lower-class women boxed and wrestled. Women have had to campaign strenuously for access to “inappropriate” sports such as rugby and weightlifting, but they have been relatively successful in their efforts and now participate in a great range of sports, many of which were thought to be prototypically masculine. Still, even at the turn of the 21st century, at the 2000 Summer Olympics men participated in 48 more events than women did. While the number of female competitors varies considerably from one Olympic team to another, it is rare for a National Olympic Committee to send equal numbers of men and women, and some Islamic countries are represented by all-male teams. Access and opportunity remain key issues, but attention has also been paid to gender-based differences in status, prestige, and the distribution of resources and rewards. Research in these areas emphasizes that, while there are individual cases of gender bias, the more fundamental problem is the persistence of social structures that systematically privilege men. Statistical studies documenting the greatly increased participation of women in recreational and elite sports, which are cause for optimism, must be supplemented by analyses of the way in which female athletes are positioned within the media-sports complex. Much recent evidence indicates that the mass media still tend, despite some laudable attempts to overcome gender bias, to reinforce conventional notions of masculinity. Although female athletes rarely suffer from role conflict ("an athlete or a woman?") as they once did, the mass media still contribute to the trivialization of female athletes, whose physical attractiveness is often stressed at the expense of their sporting prowess. At work is a set of enabling and constraining features that determine the recognition and financial rewards women receive for their participation in sports. Female athletes who conform to mainstream canons of sex appeal (which now call for an athletic rather than a voluptuous body) are eagerly sought after to appear on magazine covers and in product endorsements, while equally successful female competitors whose bodies are less conventionally attractive are passed over. At the end of the 20th century, there was greater tolerance of homosexuality in many nations; however, homosexuality remained taboo in the sporting world. While a handful of elite athletes such as diver Greg Louganis and tennis star Martina Navratilova have "come out of the closet,” homosexuality among professional athletes remains largely unknown and hidden. Women’s sports in particular have struggled with issues of sexuality. Basketball and softball, for example, have been portrayed in popular culture as a haven for lesbians, which to some degree they have been. To combat this stereotype, which has damaged efforts to increase wider participation and greater spectator interest, conventional feminine ideals have been stressed in the marketing of women’s sports. The Gay Games, established in 1980, were created to provide an opportunity for male and female gay athletes to compete openly and to counteract negative perceptions about homosexuals. Frequently overlooked in analyses of sports and gender relations is the controversial practice, common in the sporting-goods industry, of using women and children to produce equipment and clothing. Nike and a number of other manufacturers have been accused of economically exploiting women and children in developing nations (so-called sweat-shop labour) while at the same time running advertising campaigns asserting that their products empower young women. Race, ethnicity, and sports In sports, as elsewhere in society, there is a tendency to explain differences in performance in terms of some alleged physical differences between races. When Austrians do well at skiing and Swedes excel at tennis, cultural explanations have been sought through the analysis of social structures and environmental conditions. On the other hand, when Kenyans prove exceptionally good at middle-distance running, there has been a tendency to look for a physiological explanation. The tendency is misguided. As a result of the mapping of human DNA, the concept of "race" has become highly problematic. Scientists have discovered that the genetic diversity within populations sharing certain physical traits, such as skin colour, is as great as the diversity between different groups. If there are physical differences that account for Kenyan success and for the success of African American sprinters, physiologists have not yet discovered them and are not likely to. Ironically, while racism remains a useful concept for sociological analysis of some sports phenomena, such as the exclusion of African Americans from early 20th-century Major League Baseball, references to race are more likely to confuse than to clarify research into athletic performance. Despite the consensus among geneticists, some sociologists continue to conduct research on the assumption that race is a meaningful concept. Most sociologists, however, prefer to use the concept of ethnicity in their attempts to account for observed differences in performance. Ethnicity refers to the shared cultural heritage of a group. This cultural heritage, which may be claimed or imposed, includes language, customs, practices, traditions, and institutions. Since ethnic cultures are normally learned in childhood, they are so familiar that they become second nature or what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as “habitus.” Ethnic differences in sports are observable in pose and style as well as in quantifiable sports performance. Sports fans are adept at reading the distinctive nonverbal body language of different groups playing the same game. In the 1950s the exuberant play of the Brazilian national football (soccer) team, which emphasized individual skill, was strikingly different from the disciplined team-oriented style of the German side. Different ethnic groups have different rates of involvement in sports. Palestinians who are citizens of Israel are less likely than Jewish citizens to participate in sports. Turks residing in Germany are less likely than ethnic Germans to be members of sports clubs. Within both these Islamic ethnic minorities, girls and women are even less likely than boys and young men to be athletically active. Journalists have noted and sociologists have investigated the overrepresentation of African Americans in some sports (basketball, boxing, track) and their underrepresentation in others (polo, swimming, yachting). Such patterns of participation can be the result of early socialization, role modeling, peer group subcultures, economic and community structures, stereotyping, and scapegoating. Sociologists have employed these and other concepts to demonstrate why ethnic minorities tend to be less involved in sports and why, when they are involved in sports, they still tend to be excluded from or underrepresented in management, administration, and ownership. Sociological surveyors have demonstrated that sports are far from the level playing field they purport to be. The empirical evidence demonstrates that the nature and extent of athletic involvement, the chance for success, the opportunities to hold positions of power and prestige, and the gaining of positive experiences through sports are all structured along the ethnic fault lines that exist within and between societies. These processes are part of the social structures that enable and constrain different ethnic groups. The role, meaning, and significance of sports involvement is related to but not solely determined by these processes. The concept of ethnicity not only helps make sense of the differential performance attributed to race but also aids in explaining how sports are used by groups for political ends. The roles of football (soccer) and rugby in Ireland are a case in point. While separate football teams represent Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (the former a symbol of Protestant ethnic identity), international rugby games are played by a unified team that seeks to represent the whole of Ireland. These differences are tied to the complex cultural traditions of the two sports and the class profile of those involved. Similarly, games between formerly colonized nations and their former colonizers, such as cricket matches between India and England, tend to become rites of passage and are imbued with a heightened sense of symbolism. The games count as part of broader cultural struggles. Perhaps the best example of the usefulness of the concept of ethnicity rather than race as an explanation for differences in performance levels is Beyond a Boundary (1963), C.L.R. James’s classic study of the making of Caribbean cricket. James combines careful historical analysis with detailed observations of the cricket culture of his day, finding in the sport a symbolic reenactment of the struggles and inequalities that existed and still exist in the Caribbean. Human performance and the use of drugs Although performance-enhancing drugs were known as early as the 19th century, when professional cyclists used strychnine as a stimulant, the widespread use of drugs began in the 1960s. It is a practice that cuts across national and ideological boundaries. Sociologists investigating the phenomenon of drug use in sports normally put aside the moral outrage that characterizes media coverage of and political commentary on this issue. Media personnel tend to focus on the actions of high-profile stars such as Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson and Irish swimmer Michelle Smith, whose Olympic gold medals were stripped away (Johnson) or sadly tarnished by the suspicion of drug use (Smith). Whenever a prominent athlete tests positive for a banned substance, journalists, politicians, and sports administrations are likely to respond with calls for zero-tolerance policies. In contrast, sociologists ask: What is a drug? What are the social and sporting roots of drug usage? Why is the focus almost exclusively on drugs that enhance performance? What would constitute a viable policy for drug usage? Three broad categories of drugs have been identified: recreational, restorative, and additive, or performance-enhancing, drugs. While attention is focused on recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine or on anabolic steroids (synthetic compounds of the male hormone testosterone) and other performance-enhancing drugs, little or no attention is given to drugs that restore athletes to fitness. This is unfortunate because the overuse of vitamins and food supplements can also be detrimental to an athlete’s health. Greater consideration should be given to all categories of drug consumption, not just to the abuse of cocaine and anabolic steroids. One hindrance to the formulation of a rational policy about drugs is the often tenuous distinction between the natural and the artificial. This is especially true for vitamins, special diets, human growth hormones, and blood doping (the extraction and later infusion of an athlete’s own blood). In addition, there is no hard-and-fast distinction between different categories of drugs; some drugs, such as beta-blockers, fall into both the restorative and performance-enhancing categories. In examining the case for and against the implementation of bans on athletes who test positive for drug use, several key arguments can be identified. The most widely used argument for a ban is that performance-enhancing drugs confer an unfair advantage on those who use them. This argument brings the ethics of sports into play, along with the notion that athletes have a moral duty not only to adhere to the rules but also to serve as role models. Also widely used is the argument that drugs harm the athletes’ health. The “harm principle” asserts or implies that athletes must be protected from themselves. Closely associated with both arguments is the notion that bans act as a deterrent, preventing athletes from cheating and from inflicting harm on themselves. The counterargument is twofold. The argument based on fairness is said to be unpersuasive because drugs would confer no special advantage if they were legalized and made available to all athletes. Proponents of this viewpoint also note that the rules now in force allow athletes from wealthy nations to train more efficiently, with better coaching and equipment, than athletes from poorer countries, a situation that is manifestly unfair. The argument based on the “harm principle” is said to treat athletes as children. Adult athletes should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to harm their health by drug use. Sociologists have contributed to the debate on drugs by pointing out that focusing on the actions of the athlete individualizes the issue of drug usage rather than examining the social roots of drug consumption. Among the causes of drug usage that have been identified are the medicalization of social life and the vastly increased importance of sports as a source of self-esteem and material benefits. Victory has always brought greater rewards than defeat, but the differences are now on an unprecedented scale. Sociologists have also raised questions about privacy rights being violated by mandatory drug testing and about the meagre resources being provided for the rehabilitation of drug offenders. Discussions of performance-enhancing drugs are also complicated by the fact that most spectators say they disapprove of drugs even as they turn out to support athletes who have tested positive for banned substances. After the French police uncovered massive doping during the 1998 Tour de France, roadside crowds increased. The debate over drugs is further complicated when "unnatural" factors influencing performance are considered—for example, the use of psychological techniques and biotechnological intervention. The role of sports psychology began to increase significantly in the 1990s. Goal setting, focus, and visualization exercises were designed to ensure that athletes would concentrate on reaching their peak performance. Distractions were to be eliminated. The growth of biotechnological intervention in human affairs, including the potential impact of genetic engineering, also raises many issues for sports. While many people uncritically accept this type of intervention in the context of restorative medicine, the boundary line between rehabilitation and enhancement, as in the case of drugs, is not clear. Reconstructive surgery, implants, and technological adjustments contribute, along with drug use and masochistically intense training regimes, to the creation of what John M. Hoberman calls “mortal engines.” These interventions into the “natural” body have to be considered within the broader debate concerning sports and what it is to be human. Joseph Anthony Maguire Psychology of sports Although a book titled Psychologie des sports (“Psychology of Sports”) was published in 1927 by the German psychologist Alfred Peters, the field developed slowly. The International Society of Sport Psychology was not established until 1965. At that time, research tended to focus on personality, motivation, and aggression. For decades, psychologists attempted to identify personality traits that distinguished athletes in one sport from those in another (and from nonathletes). Using American psychologist Raymond Cattell’s Personality Factor Questionnaire and a battery of other paper-and-pencil inventories, researchers came to contradictory results. Beyond the fact that athletes are more physically active than nonathletes and the equally obvious fact that athletes drawn to individual sports score higher on "autonomy" and "independence" than athletes devoted to team sports, there was little consensus on "the athletic personality." If one controls for social class, athletes tend to be very much like nonathletes and to be like one another. Studies of the "athletic personality" have become rare, but studies of motivation and of aggression have increased in number and have become increasingly multifactored and sophisticated. Early studies of motivation, often inspired by the work of American psychologists David McClelland and John Atkinson, examined the relationship between the need for achievement and the fear of failure. Female athletes proved to be a special problem. For a number of years, their lower levels of motivation were explained as a fear that athletic success came at the cost of diminished femininity. This fear was, in turn, explained as the result of role conflict. A woman’s fervent interest in sports might be perceived as an expression of a masculine nature or of lesbianism; psychological tests such as American psychologist Sandra Bem’s Sex Role Inventory routinely classified female athletes as "masculine" because they scored high on scales for competition and aggressiveness. By the end of the century, however, in Europe and North America greater social acceptance of intensely competitive female athletes (and of lesbianism) more or less eliminated role conflict and the "fear of success." At the recreational level as well as at the elite level, recent studies have shown conclusively that sports participation generally leads to increased, rather than diminished, self-esteem for girls and women as well as for boys and men. In Problem Athletes and How to Handle Them (1966), Americans Bruce Ogilvie and Thomas Tutko attempted to apply motivational principles to improve sports performance. Their widely used Athletic Motivation Inventory was designed to measure personality traits, such as leadership and mental toughness, conducive to athletic achievement. Other psychologists have explored a variety of techniques, including meditation, mental imaging, and even hypnosis, to lessen anxiety or control arousal or improve concentration. Still other psychologists have sought to enhance performance by studying the dynamics of small-group interaction and the relative efficacy of different coaching and leadership styles. Gender accounts for some of the observed differences. Although female athletes are increasingly similar psychologically to male athletes, they continue to respond more readily than men do to encouragement and to react more negatively than men do to admonition. Cultural differences, which sports psychologists sometimes neglect, are also important. Japanese athletes respond better than their North American counterparts to harsh criticism and punitive discipline. Cultural differences also play an important role when the stage is set for pharmacological intervention. The more authoritarian the culture is, the more likely it has been that coaches will demand that elite athletes use performance-enhancing drugs, such as anabolic steroids, and abjure recreational drugs, such as cocaine. Usain Bolt of Jamaica reacts after breaking the world record with a time of 19.30 to win the gold medal as Churandy Martina (left) of Netherlands Antilles and Brian Dzingai of Zimbabwe come in after him in the Men's 200m Final at the National Stadium during Day 12 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 20, 2008 in Beijing, China. (Summer Olympics, track and field, athletics) Britannica Quiz I Am the Greatest (Athlete) The motivation for recreational sports is unquestionably different from the motivation at the elite level. Recreational and elite athletes share a common desire to improve their skills and to win, rather than lose, a contest. Both are likely to value the social pleasures of team membership and to experience the moments of ecstatic fulfillment that some psychologists refer to as "flow." There are, however, important differences in the kind and in the intensity of their motivation. Material rewards figure, of course, among the motives of openly professional athletes, but, even when economic motives are not in play, elite athletes are a breed apart. They are likely to feel themselves to be representatives of their nation (or of some other collectivity). Standing on the victor’s podium and watching one’s national flag rise to the strains of one’s national anthem can motivate as strongly as the prospect of signing a million-dollar contract (and the first frequently leads to the second). When inspired by a combination of economic and representational motives, elite athletes can reach almost unimaginable levels of athletic performance, but they are also liable to develop a win-at-all-costs attitude that motivates them to use performance-enhancing drugs, to commit intentional fouls, and to risk lifelong physical disability by "playing hurt" (continuing to compete despite a serious injury). This disregard for one’s health is perhaps the most important motivational difference between the elite and the recreational athlete. For the latter, a principal motive for sports participation (and for visits to an aerobics class or a fitness centre) is a desire to improve one’s health and to shape one’s body into closer conformity to contemporary ideals of physical attractiveness. For the former, the physical self is frequently jeopardized and sometimes sacrificed on the altar of sports success. Sports spectators have also been the focus of a great deal of psychological research. Despite the 19th-century code of impartial good sportsmanship, spectators do strongly identify with athletes whom they see as representatives of their race, religion, national state, ethnic group, city, or school. American psychologist Daniel L. Wann has shown, among other things, that knowledge about the sport correlates strongly with the intensity of this identification. The fans’ behaviour varies in response to winning and losing. When their team wins, fans refer to "our victory" and wear the sweatshirts that identify them as loyal supporters; when their team fares badly, fans tend to doff the sweatshirts and to complain about "the team’s loss." (Similarly, studies have demonstrated that winning athletes tend to attribute their success to their own superior skills, while losing athletes tend to attribute their failure to bad luck or to their opponents’ unfairness.) Sometimes fans do more than complain. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a dramatic increase in violence committed by sports spectators. Most of the research on this phenomenon has been done by Eric Dunning of Great Britain and other sports sociologists, but a number of social psychologists have also studied sports-related aggression. Behind their research lay a question: Is aggressiveness innate, as Sigmund Freud insists, or is it learned, as American psychologist Albert Bandura (among others) argues? If the former, sports spectators may experience a "safety-valve" catharsis, thanks to which the propensity to commit acts of aggression is diminished; if the latter, sports spectatorship may actually increase aggressiveness. Experiments conducted with an apparatus originally designed by American Arnold Buss measured the level of electric shock subjects were ready to administer to another person. Subjects who had watched a sports event on film were willing to administer higher levels of shock than subjects who had seen a travelogue or some other nonviolent film. These experiments, in conjunction with paper-and-pencil tests and the obvious fact that sports-related riots commonly occur after (rather than before) a contest, proved conclusively that sports spectators do not experience a "safety-valve" catharsis. After leaving the venue or turning off their television sets, they are more, rather than less, prone to violence than they were before the contest began. Sports  psychology leads to the odd conclusion that sports may be good for athletes and bad for spectators.
  • Condition: New
  • Sub-Type: Football
  • Options: European Players/ Clubs
  • Type: Sport
  • Surname Initial: M
  • Signed: Yes
  • Object: Signed Coin
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
  • Certification: Pre-Printed

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