‘Make Goals Not War’: The Contribution of International Football to World Peace

Abstract

Academic treatments of football have tended to focus either on the game's capacity to inspire xenophobic hooliganism amongst its followers or how it has been exploited by politicians for nationalistic purposes. This article seeks to readdress the imbalanced impression of football's social and political impact presented in this literature and in the dominant media discourse by highlighting the positive contributions made by the world's most popular sport to international relations by facilitating communication and respect for global rules of fair play.

Notes

 [1] Sepp Blatter, ‘Make Goals Not War. FIFA President Praises “Football for Peace” in Haiti’, speech, 16 Aug. 2004, available online at http://www.fifa.com/en/media/index/0,1369,102677,00.html, accessed 28 July 2006.

 [2] Lars Gustafsson, 18 Jan. 2001, available online at http://gacpla.org/about/football_nobel_nomination.htm, accessed 9 Sept. 2004.

 [3] Rob Hughes, ‘World Soccer: Peace Prize? Soccer Needs to Clean up its Act’. International Herald Tribune, 24 Jan. 2001, available online at http://www.iht.com/articles/2001/01/24/soccer.2.t_15.php, accessed 5 March 2007; Associated Press, ‘Football Nominated for Nobel Prize’, 22 Jan. 2001, available online at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/scandinavia/01/22/norway.football/, accessed 13 April 2005.

 [4] Giles Smith, ‘The Nobel Game’, Daily Telegraph, 26 Jan. 2001, available online at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2001/01/26/sfngil27.xml

 [5] ‘The Beautiful Game’, People's Weekly World online newspaper, 13 July 2006, available online at http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/9489/1/142/, accessed 3 Sept. 2005.

 [6] John Lichfield, ‘Jules Rimet: the Man who Kicked off the World Cup’, The Independent (London), 5 June 2006, available online at http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article625122.ece, accessed 6 March 2007.

 [7] Orwell, ‘The Sporting Spirit’.

 [8] See: Bailey, Science in the Service of Physical Education and Sport.

 [9] ‘Sport for Peace and Development. International Year of Sport and Physical Education’ UN General Assembly, A/59/268, 16 Aug. 2004, available online at http://www.un.org/unfip/docs/sportsA-59-268.pdf

[10] Andrea Sadecky, ‘FIFA and the United Nations. Educating the Most Underprivileged Through Sport’, UN Chronicle, available online at http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2006/issue4/0406p40.htm, accessed 17 Feb. 2007.

[11] See for example Dunning et al., Fighting Fans; Armstrong and Giullianotti, Fear and Loathing in World Football.

[12] See for example ‘Sport in World Politics’, special edition of International Journal: Quarterly of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs 43 (1988); Arbena, ‘Generals and Goles’; Beck, Scoring for Britain.

[13] Fascism and Football, BBC4 TV documentary, first broadcast 23 Sept. 2003.

[14] E. Nash, ‘Spain's Soccer Coach Sent off by Politician’, Independent on Sunday, 13 Sept. 1998, 15.

[15] Dunning et al., Fighting Fans, 4–5.

[16] Gasser, Open Fun Football Schools.

[17] Kapuscinski, The Soccer War, 157–84.

[18] Murphy et al., Football on Trial.

[19] Tsoukala, Sport et Violence.

[20] See http://www.footballsupportersinternational.com/, accessed 27 March 2007.

[21] Fascism and Football, BBC4.

[22] Boniface, ‘Football as a Factor’.

[23] See for example Durham, ‘Scarcity and Survival in Central America’, 318–19.

[24] See Kingsley and Taylor, Albion in China.

[25] See http://www.football4peace.org.uk/, accessed 6 March 2007.

[26] See http://www.ccpa.dk/english/CCPA/default.asp?body=/english/CCPA/statutes.htm, accessed 6 March 2007.

[27] See for example Sakaedani, ‘2002 FIFA World Cup and Its Effects’.

[28] ‘Brazilians to Play Haitians for Peace’, BBC News website, 30 June 2004, available online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3852095.stm, accessed 23 April 2005.

[29] J. Lichfield, ‘Les Bleus beat Le Pen’, The Independent, 7 July 1998, 28. It should, however, be noted that Le Pen still endeavoured to muster sufficient support from the French public to come second in the next presidential elections.

[30] P. Escobar, ‘And all for a Little Round Ball …’, Asia Times, 9 June 2006.

[31] P. Boniface, ‘La Geopolitica del Futbol’, El Pais, 8 June 2006.

[32] Beck, ‘The Relevance of the Irrelevant’.

[33] J. Corrigan, ‘Mountain Men Take to the Field’, The Independent, 13 Nov. 1996.

[34] A. Lawrence, ‘No Danger of Riga Mortis’, The Observer, 23 Nov. 2003, available online at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/sport/story/0,,1091220,00.html, accessed 12 March 2006.

[35] J. Holden, ‘Greenland v Tibet – Both Win’, World Soccer, August 2001, 56.

[36] Sorek, ‘Palestinian Nationalism has left the Field’.

[37] See for example Gemmell, The Politics of South African Cricket.

[38] K. Annan, ‘Football Envy at the UN’, The Guardian, 12 June 2006, available online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1795258,00.html, accessed 8 March 2007.

[39] Krasner, International Regimes, 2.

[40] Several UN members are not, however, members of FIFA: Eritrea, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Palau and Samoa.

[41] FIFA, ‘History of the World Cup’, available online at http://www.fifa.com/en/history/history/0,1283,5,00.html, accessed 4 Sept. 2006.

[42] ‘Soccer Rules the World’, special supplement, National Geographic, June 2006.

[43] See for example Croft, ‘South Asia's Arms Control Process’.

[44] President Ronald Reagan made the bid in a personal meeting with FIFA president Joao Havelange at the White House in 1987. ‘Sport People: World Cup Bid’, New York Times, 20 Nov. 1987, available online at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2DA113BF933A15752C1A961948260, accessed 13 Nov. 2007.

[45] S. Brook, ‘World Cup to Break TV Records’, The Guardian, 5 June 2006.

[46] Milanovic, ‘Globalization and Goals’.

[47] Though Franco did refuse to allow Spain play the USSR in the 1960 European National Championships.

[48] See Polley, ‘The Diplomatic Background to the 1966 World Cup’.

[49] Sorek, ‘Arab Football in Israel’.

[50] Giulianotti and Robertson, ‘The Globalization of Football’, 558.