Soccer Vs. The State

Gabriel Kuhn

Description

From its working-class roots to commercialisation and resistance to it - this is football history for the politically conscious fan. Football is a multi-billion pound industry. Professionalism and commercialisation dominate its global image. Yet the game retains a rebellious side, maybe more so than any other sport co-opted by money-makers and corrupt politicians. Soccer vs. The State traces its amazing history.

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 21 juillet 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604865240
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

There is no sport that reflects the place where sports and politics collide quite like soccer. Athlete-activist Gabriel Kuhn has captured that by going to a place where other sports writers fear to tread. Here is the book that will tell you how soccer explains the world while offering means to improve it .
— Dave Zirin, author of Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love

In an era when football appears captured by the forces of money and power, straitjacketed by the needs of corporations and international bureaucracies, Gabriel Kuhn’s Soccer vs. the State is a wondrous reminder of all the times and ways and places where football has slipped its chains and offers what it always promised: new solidarities and identities, a site of resistance, a celebration of spontaneity and play .
— David Goldblatt, author of The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer

In 1971, my sister Meredith and I successfully disrupted the Australia vs. South Africa rugby encounter at the Sydney Cricket Ground as anti-apartheid activists. This demonstrated not only the intrinsic relationship between sport and politics but also the significance of sport as a vehicle for political protest . Soccer vs. the State shows how activists and players alike have made use of this in football, the world’s most popular and most beautiful game—an encouraging and inspiring read!
—Verity Burgmann, professor of political science, Melbourne University

It is about time to document the rich and colorful world of football that exists apart from broadsheet celebrities and glitzy stadiums . Soccer vs . the State reminds everyone of the deep political implications of football culture and of the potentials for political resistance that they entail .
— Ronny Galczynski, author of the FC St. Pauli Vereinsenzyklopädie

If David Goldblatt gave us the broader social context of football, Gabriel Kuhn’s book takes a further step to show how political radicalism and activism have also been integral parts of the game’s history. This is a passionate book with an intriguing angle that adds importantly to the new literature on the sociology of the game. A funny, extremely informative and highly recommendable read!
—Aina Tollefsen, Institute for Social and Economic Geography, Umeå University

An indispensable, global guide to radical football and radical politics. At a time when so much about the beautiful game has become ugly, Kuhn provides us with a timely reminder that, indeed, football can be part of the revolution. Read it and resist!
—Dale T. McKinley, co-founder of South Africa’s Anti-Privatisation Forum

Gabriel Kuhn has written the program notes for the most important match of all, The People’s Game vs. Modern Football .
—Mark Perryman, co-founder of Philosophy Football

Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics Gabriel Kuhn
© PM Press 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by: PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks Interior design by briandesign
ISBN: 978-1-60486-053-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927830 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA on recycled paper
Contents
Foreword by Boff Whalley
Introduction
History: Truths and Myths about Football as a Working-Class Sport
Radical Debates on Football
Football and Politics
Football’s Role as an “Opiate of the Masses”
Nationalism and Sectarianism
Fan Violence
The Commercialization of the Game and the “New Football Economy”
Bigotry in Football Culture
Radical Interventions in the Professional Game
A Stage for Protests
Social Justice Campaigns
Personalities
Teams
Supporters
Clubs as Cooperatives, Not as Corporations
Alternative Football Culture
Grassroots and Underground Football Culture
Football for Radicals
Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Images
Articles, Essays, Interviews
Foreword
My first football match, an FA Cup replay between my hometown Burnley FC and visitors Chelsea, took place in 1970. Despite growing up playing football, talking about football and wanting to be a footballer, the rush and push of that game, as a 9-year-old, shocked me—on the pitch and on the terraces, so potent, exciting and colourful! So much life and noise squashed into such a small place.
By the time of my first music concert, by a local punk band in a town centre youth club seven years later, I’d been told I wasn’t going to make it as a footballer and had taken instead to playing music, talking about music and wanting to be a musician. Still, that first concert was, like my first football match, potent, exciting and colourful; a place of life and noise.
These two events, as if in a secret pact, joined together and combined to energise, delight and frustrate me from that day to this. As with music, having football in my life wasn’t a choice. Once bitten, the bug wouldn’t leave. I did realise, though, that I had the power to interpret and organise this obsession; I could choose how to dress up my infatuation with this simple game. In short, I could complicate it. Learn its weaknesses and strengths, put it in context, criticise and praise, adorn and strip away. None of this prodding diminished my love for the game; if anything, my passion for the underdog—politically, socially, culturally—has given meaning to an increasingly distant top-layer of football. (In pubs and on terraces around the world I’ve gladly supported any number of teams in the hope of them beating Man Utd/Real Madrid/Bayern Munich).
Football is a complicated game. This book—veering between love affair and put-down, between pro- and anti-, between football’s potential and football’s ignorance—sets out to prod and poke its fingers into that big, messy personal passion we have for the game. It’s a remarkable collection. It displays both football’s traditional masculinity, conservatism, racism, homophobia and nationalism alongside the game’s saviours, the activists and autonomous organisations who are gradually changing the way football is played, watched and regulated.
It also contrasts the revolting corporate colossus of the most ‘successful’ clubs with the honest, inspiring and groundbreaking work done by grassroots alliances and fan clubs. What the book reminds us of is that despite the damage done to the game by the billionaire owners and TV franchises, the heart of football is still defiantly where it was at the game’s inception: 22 players kicking a ball around a field and an audience of several thousand mainly working class supporters celebrating their communal solidarity. The book’s conclusion is worth the price of admission (through the turnstiles, of course) alone.
The first time I heard our song ‘Tubthumping’ being played at Turf Moor (home of Burnley FC) I was in the toilets behind the main stand having a piss. And believe it or not, the synthesis of a lifelong love of the culture and context of both music and football came together right there in that smelly urinal. It didn’t matter then that I didn’t think it was particularly representative of the band, or that people had little idea of the song’s meaning—all that mattered was that we’d somehow (briefly) become part of the fabric of a working class popular culture, football culture. Never mind the years of writing slyly anarchist rallying-calls: that’s my team, running out onto the pitch to my song while I’m down here zipping up my flies! I’ve never finished a piss so fast in my life.
I love football. I hate football too, sometimes—but never for long enough to dent that complicated passion. If you’re like me, this book will prod and poke at you, instruct you, and remind you of your initial introduction to football’s excitement and potency. How could anyone read Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos’ mischievous letter to the President of Inter Milan without laughing along? Or fail to agree with the 1917 Argentinian anarchist journal La Protesta’s denunciation of the “pernicious idiotization caused by the constant running after a round object”? So much life and noise…squashed into such a small book.
Boff Whalley, Chumbawamba
November 2010
Introduction
A few months ago I was tabling at a media fair in Germany. Early in the second day, the flow of visitors was rather slow and I started chatting with an Argentinean friend who had a stall nearby. In a swift thirty minutes, we covered a number of issues: anarchism vs. communism, the German autonomous movement, the overall crisis of the left, the future of radical publishing, etc. Then we started talking football—three hours later, we were still at the same topic. We had discussed the 2010 Men’s World Cup in South Africa, corrupt football associations, fan cultures in South America and Europe, the origins of our favorite clubs, and many pressing issues like the biggest upsets, the most beautiful goals, and the worst referee’s calls in the history of the game. Eventually, we had to relieve the folks who had attended to our stalls although we were long from finished.
This book is for two kinds of people: those who have similar discussions all the time; and those who have always wondered how politically inclined folks can enjoy them. The intention is to provide an overview of the connections between football and radical politics, i.e., politics that pursue fundamental social change in order to create egalitarian communities comprised of free individuals. The focus will be on three main aspects: 1) manifestations of radical politics in the professional game; 2) radical soccer fan culture; 3) the radical soccer underground that has spread across the world.
On a personal level, the motivation was simple. For a long time, I have been trying to reconcile a deeply rooted passion for soccer with my political convictions.
In 1987, at the age of fifteen, I was on the roster of FC Kufstein, a semi-professional second-