Tamir Bar-On. Beyond Soccer: International Relations and Politics as Seen through the Beautiful Game. Lanham and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. 340 pages (including selected bibliography, index, and author information) US$35.00 (paperback). Reviewed by Patrick Salkeld As sport historians know, politics and sports coexist in the same spheres. Athletes, such as Colin Kaepernick or…
By Patrick Salkeld I attended my first NASSH conference in 2016 at Georgia Tech University. I met many scholars, found a home within the community, and spent much of my time talking to other soccer historians such as Zach Bigalke, George Kiousis, Chris Bolsmann, Chris Henderson, Gabe Logan, and David Kilpatrick. The soccer historians in…
By Zachary R. Bigalke Editor’s Note: This post is based on the experiences of one of our contributors, Zachary R. Bigalke, at the 2017 NASSH Convention. At the 2017 North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) Convention, held over Memorial Day weekend at Cal State University, Fullerton, there was a slew of research that advanced historical…
Kevin E. Simpson, Soccer under the Swastika: Stories of Survival and Resistance During the Holocaust. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. xxix + 368 pp. 27 photos and illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, $40.00 hardback. Reviewed by Patrick Salkeld. I am a trained US historian with an emphasis on soccer, but much of my research spans…
By Zachary R. Bigalke In the summer of 1986 Diego Maradona sealed an eternal place in Argentinian hearts, notching both the most revered and the most reviled goals in FIFA World Cup history in a 2-1 quarterfinal victory over England. “We were representing our dead who were sent to die by their own country,” Maradona…
by Zachary R. Bigalke The ideology of racial democracy cast a long shadow over twentieth-century race relations in Brazil. First popularized by influential Brazilian scholar Gilberto Freyre, this theory presumed a level racial playing field that was paradoxically dependent on the whitening of the populace. Rather than helping to drive the country toward a multiracial…
By Massimo Foglio The first footprints of football in Europe date back to Thursday, November 25, 1897. American art students in Paris, attending either the National School of Fine Arts or the Académie Julian, decided to demonstrate a custom from their homeland by staging a football game, hosted by the Racing Club de France. In…
By Patrick Salkeld Controversy surrounded Jürgen Klinsmann’s tenure as the head coach of the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT) since nearly the beginning. He created tension between himself and Don Garber, the Commissioner of Major League Soccer (MLS), about implementing promotion and relegation in the United States and the quality of American soccer in…
Curry, Graham, and Eric Dunning. Association Football: A Study in Figurational Sociology. London: Routledge, 2015. Pp. 192 + index. $148.00 hardback, $53.95 paperback. Reviewed by Zachary R. Bigalke It is natural to long for a concise and clear historical timeline, to be able to easily and definitively explain the chain of events that lead to…
By Patrick Salkeld I started to write and research for this paper in February 2016 after I submitted a proposal for the inaugural Gender and Sexuality Studies Conference held at the University of Central Oklahoma in September 2016. I already planned to write about Robbie Rogers and his contribution to global history when he came…
Sport in American History 