Ordinary heroes: England international football players in the 1990s

Abstract

This paper considers recent debates about the quality of English football, and it also looks at alleged connections between declining standards and the restructuring of the Football League in England. It contrasts the specific qualities of the British style against those more commonly associated in English eyes with the continent and it also looks at the increasing in fluence of television in shaping the consumption of football as a global idiom. It concludes by arguing that growing commercialization and globalization per se cannot alone explain the increased physical stresses on players and the peculiarly robust style of play in Britain. For this one also needs closely to examine discourses on masculinity, class, nation and tradition, and to locate the effects of these discourses as mediators of recent trends in the management and marketing of the sport.