current issue

CHRIS BOLSMANN

MEN’S PROFESSIONAL SOCCER IN THE UNITED STATES: THE PROVERBIAL SPORT OF TOMORROW

Men’s professional soccer in the United States is both popular and profitable. This article offers a broad historical overview of the key factors in the development of the professional game, highlighting the continuities and changes in its organization. First, wealthy investors have consistently prioritized profit. Second, league officials regularly modify the rules—often deviating from global norms—to appeal to American spectators. Third, US professional soccer has long relied on international talent to boost its popularity, frequently at the expense of local player development. Finally, immigration has played a critical role in shaping the game’s growth and transformation.

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GIJSBERT OONK

BEYOND THE PITCH: NATIONAL IDENTITY, MIGRATION, AND ELIGIBILITY IN THE FUTURE OF NATIONAL FOOTBALL TEAMS

While football may seem like a straightforward competition between two teams of 11 players, eligibility regulations reflect deeper issues around national identity and citizenship. Complex legal and cultural factors shape decisions about who can represent a country, and coaches must navigate nationality rules set by both states and FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which governs organized football globally). Increasingly, national federations actively recruit players with dual or multiple citizenships, as seen in Morocco’s pursuit of Moroccan-European players for recent World Cups. This article explores the impact of migration, citizenship, and identity on FIFA and national teams, redefining the future of international football competition.

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DIEGO VILCHES PARRA

CHILE’S CLUB PALESTINO: FOOTBALL AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CONTEMPORARY PALESTINIAN IDENTITY

The world’s largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East lives in Chile, where Palestinians have migrated since the 1880s. Much of Chile’s Palestinian culture is expressed via Club Palestino, a football club founded in 1920 that plays in Chile’s top division. The team uniforms feature the colors of the Palestinian flag. The essay examines the broader historical context of the Palestinian presence in Chile and how this community utilized its sports club to integrate into society while maintaining connections to its ancestral culture. Club Palestino’s identity is intertwined with a sense of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, emphasizing the challenges of cultural survival amid genocide.

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BRENDA ELSEY

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS: GENDERED VIOLENCE AND CORRUPTION IN SOUTH AMERICAN FOOTBALL

The unethical financial practices of global football leaders have become notorious and normalized over the past 50 years, but they are only part of the systemic rot that exists in the foundations—the clubs, leagues, and federations of each FIFA member nation. South American football leaders played an outsized role in developing these systems, with tragic consequences for women and children. At the same time, they have attempted to improve their global image by claiming to support women’s football. While mainstream narratives tend to segregate gender inequities and sexual abuse from financial crimes, this essay, examining the cases of Argentina and Colombia, two countries at the center of the sport, posits that a feminist analysis provides a valuable way to understand, and hopefully reduce, corruption in football.

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JUNG WOO LEE

WOMEN’S FOOTBALL AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA IN NORTH KOREA: SOCIALIST PATRIOTISM, COMMUNIST FEMINISM, AND STATE PATRIARCHY

In 2024 the North Korean women’s football team achieved a significant milestone by winning four international cups. This study discusses how the despotic communist regime in North Korea exploits such sporting triumphs to promulgate its ruling ideologies, especially through political messages embedded in domestic newspaper coverage of women’s football. This state’s production and articulation of political propaganda through sports is second to none in the world. From the reinforcement of socialism to the idolization of the political leader, the case of North Korea offers the prototype of the intersection of politics and football under authoritarian regimes.

 

 

CK SNYDER

THE “GAY PLAY” QUESTION: GAY FOOTBALLERS IN BRAZIL AND QUEER CRITIQUES OF MAINSTREAM SOCCER

With the FIFA 2026 men’s World Cup set to kick off in North America, a notable silence remains: Not a single participating player has openly identified as gay. Players often feel forced to choose between playing football or being out. Navigating this double bind, some queer men have formed their own leagues. My ethnographic research about the Brazilian LiGay (Gay League) demonstrates how players challenged football’s presumed heterosexuality by organizing locally, competing internationally, calling out discrimination and highlighting its impacts, and asserting their commitment to fair play. This research sheds light on the vital role alternative leagues play in fostering inclusive spaces and pushing for change within broader football communities.

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RADOSLAW KOSSAKOWSKI

FOOTBALL-RELATED VIOLENCE, HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY, AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION: FANDOM AND FOOTBALL IN POST-TRANSITION EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE

The main goal of this article is to examine football fan culture in post-transition Eastern and Central Europe. While the region includes countries with varied histories, ethnicities, and religious influences, a shared communist past has shaped their social trajectories. The article argues that contemporary fan culture—marked by symbolic and physical violence, rigid gender norms emphasizing traditional masculinity, and right-wing exclusionary ideologies—has roots in this postcommunist legacy. As such, any sociological analysis of the football fan environment must be grounded in the region’s contemporary history, without which the story of fans and football would remain incomplete.

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BEN CARRINGTON

REPRESENTING ENGLAND: SPORT, POLITICS, AND CONTESTED IDENTITIES

This article outlines how sport has become a significant site for debates around national identity and belonging. Sport is not just a form of popular entertainment and physical achievement but also a domain for the exercise of power and therefore a site of political contestation. Due to the UK’s internal political tensions and external socioeconomic conditions, English nationalism has emerged as a distinct political project, with football an important conduit for these discussions. Using the women’s 2025 and the men’s 2020 UEFA football championships, I discuss the politics of national representation and the reproduction of racism in the context of English society and the possibilities and limitations of sport as a form of cultural politics.

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T. R. GRIFFIN

STORIES RETOLD: QATAR 2022, SAUDI ARABIA 2034, AND HOW GULF FOOTBALL IS FRAMED WITHIN A GLOBAL FOOTBALL DISCOURSE

Despite having existed on the periphery of the game for over half a century, Gulf football underwent a seismic change when it was announced that Qatar had won the right to host the 2022 World Cup. However, accusations of corruption and sportswashing soon followed, and the subsequent narrative of football in the region is nearly always presented along these lines. In this article I examine the literary devices used to depict Qatar society in the tournament narrative to argue that Qatar 2022, and Gulf football in general, is represented in a Eurocentric manner in a global football discourse.

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ROBIN HARTANTO HONGGARE

THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTOURS OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STADIUMS

The rise of modern stadiums in Southeast Asia during the mid-twentieth century was deeply intertwined with shifting geopolitical landscapes. While several works have examined the architecture of each stadium separately within their respective national histories, this article explores shared themes and temporalities that connect them. Focusing on examples from the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia, I identify three geopolitical contours—body politics, independence movements, and Cold War dynamics—that not only provided a backdrop for but also actively influenced the architectural design of modern stadiums across the region.

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VALERIA GUZMÁN VERRI

NEGATIVE ACCUMULATION: TWO STADIUMS, A CONVENTION CENTER, AND A SUGAR REFINERY IN JAMAICA

Since the early 2000s, Caribbean governments have turned to Chinese state banks and construction firms to finance and develop sports and other public infrastructure, including cultural infrastructure, agribusiness, and housing, in the region. Emphasizing the Jamaican experience, this article examines the outcomes of these projects, focusing less on architectural typologies or diplomatic agendas and more on the patterns of disuse and failure that emerge across various sectors, including sports. Situating these patterns within the postcolonial built environment, the article draws on the descriptor “negative accumulation” as a framework for exploring spatially how current infrastructure-construction processes simultaneously produce excess and deficit. Through this lens, failure is not merely an endpoint but a dynamic through which specific forms of value, exclusion, and loss are produced and sustained.