Comments on: A More or Less Innocent Question

By: Pitch Invasion » Lead Story » Selling Tolerance in Football

Pitch Invasion » Lead Story » Selling Tolerance in Football — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:09:43 +0000

[...] best addressed: will it be solved by an advertising campaign to kick racism out of football, by the levelling tendency of corporate globalisation, or does it need more radical and direct action by those on the pitch and in the [...]

By: Daily Dose 1.25.08 - World Cup Blog - African Cup of Nations 2008

Daily Dose 1.25.08 - World Cup Blog - African Cup of Nations 2008 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:02:23 +0000

[...] Why globalization might be good for the game (Run of Play) [...]

By: SpanglyPrincess

SpanglyPrincess — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:31:23 +0000

I think one of the answers to your question could perhaps be summarised as the difference between patriotism and nationalism; that is to say, the difference between exalting the object of one's own loyalty, which may inherently entail rivalry with others, but is not intrinsically aimed at denigrating them, and a form of devotion to one's own cause which is predicated upon superiority vs the innate inferiority of others. Football support can be the former rather than the latter, that is to say patriotic rather than nationalist… (I refer here of course both to club sides and national ones)

Rather perhaps than globalization, we need a more sophisticated model of the interrelation of local identity with other, wider identities. If one boils the identity right down to the smallest level, it becomes a sustainable sporting identity without being a functional identity of any other kind, a kind of reductio ad absurdum which means that local communities & traditional fanbases have to establish the limits of the possibilities of their footballing loyalty. That's a social and intellectual shift rather than one tending towards corporatization, I think.

By: sp3ktor

sp3ktor — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:18:02 +0000

I found this article from almost five years ago, it says plenty about the reasons why bloggers complain so much about money in the game

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm.....27,00.html

As a complete coincidence this article dates back to the day issue 1 of the Onion bag was launched – 5 years on the arguments haven't really changed.

By: roswitha

roswitha — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:59:13 +0000

I think it depends on the way you want things to change? Globalisation is the best way to get football to conform to a set of rules defined by the giant market, and how those rules negotiate with our own concepts of morality or justice, etc, may not always stay constant, now or in future. I do think that how we perceive racism, *and* anti-racism measures in England, which is a fully globalised football market, has been heavily influenced by its corporatization. So it has had some effect on racism in the English game; but I don't think it's been a trade-off that has particularly benefited society, and as we see time and again, has made a pretty cosmetic difference in some cases.

Perhaps the best we can hope for thanks to globalisation is some kind of percolation, both of awareness and resources, that allows people, in small groups, to go back to the grassroots and start impacting the game from the ground-up, in positive ways. Because that kind of folksy, personal involvement, flakey though it may seem to someone looking at the bigger picture, may just be the only way to make some kind of lasting impact that does not require some kind of Faustian deal, major or minor.

Wow, I should go to bed. *mumbles, gets coat*