Torbjörn Andersson

Football in Scandinavia: a fusion of welfare policy and the market

Taylor and Francis Ltd FSAS_A_377306.sgm 10.1080/14660970902771365 Socce Society 466-0970 (pri t)/1743-9590 (online) Original Article 2 09 & Fran s 3/4 0 000May-Ju 2009 rbjorn nders on . ndersson@mah.se Football – or soccer – plays, and has played, a significant role in Scandinavian/Nordic Society, and for the development of society. No doubt! Football in the Scandinavian countries could be described as an amalgam of voluntarism and commercialism with historical roots in the development of the Welfare State. With a legacy in voluntarism and idealism, the organization of football has generally been related to political and normative virtues such as democracy, social and moral fostering, and cultural ideals such as the integration of young people from the working class (in earlier days) or from immigrant groups (at the present time). Being a non-profit organization, the Sports Federations in Scandinavia should serve ‘sports for all’; but in this spacious ideal and method, nonetheless, the objective is to single out future elite athletes. In an international comparison the Scandinavian countries have supported amateurism longer than most nations. Notwithstanding a substantial position in voluntarism, the normative structure and the organization of Scandinavian football has faced an increasing professionalization and commercialization in the wake of the mounting globalization of football. In this respect we can observe a process of transition, in which elements of idealism as well as commercialism can be traced. This process focuses on elements that stand out as central on the present agenda in the discourse of the European Union and the UEFA, by capturing football as ‘business’, as well as football belonging to the cultural sphere, with a special focus on ‘the social significance of sport’ and ‘social cohesion’. This condition – of belonging to different spheres and values – creates a fertile soil for reflections on the future of football in relation to, for instance, morals, economy, culture, regulation and organization. The collection of essays will capture, in different perspectives, this problematic and uncertain position of Scandinavian football. Before presenting the contents of this set of essays, we will briefly introduce a number of short but crucial observations regarding the development or the structure of football in Scandinavia.

A diagnosis of the commercial immaturity of Swedish club football.

This article presents a critical diagnosis of Swedish club football, in light of its current shortcomings on the European football market, and in comparison with the other Scandinavian leagues. The article highlights the commercial immaturity of the Swedish clubs, in addition to the context of historical and cultural values, restricted association forms, the emphasis on internationalism, the fixed tax system, the standards of the arenas, the lack of patronage and the migration of talents. The analysis closes with a depressed depiction of Swedish club football, in relation to development in Europe, as well as in Scandinavia. Still, in a dialectical reasoning this situation is, finally, evaluated as a valuable development in relation to fairness, internal sports logics as well as ecological values.

Immigrant teams in Sweden and the case of Assyriska FF

The essay deals with the history of immigration teams in Sweden, from the post‐war period until today and with the case of the successful Assyrian football club, Assyriska FF. The analysis of national newspapers shows that matches with the immigrant teams immediately became controversial. The early teams of South European background played in the lower divisions. They were referred to as hot‐tempered ‘foreign teams’, and they made the headlines because the players and their supporters often got involved in fights on and off the field. These problems have decreased in the last ten years. One immigrant team, Assyriska FF from Södertälje, reached the Premier League in 2005. Despite this achievement, the team lacks support from the majority of the people in Södertälje. For the Assyrian‐Syrian population the feeling is completely different as the team has helped them to become the most integrated group in Södertälje.

Scandinavian women’s football in a global world: migration, management and mixed identity

This special issue has grown out of an ongoing Nordic collaborative research project (Nordcorp) using Scandinavian women’s football as a strategically selected extreme case (of organizational devel ...

Scandinavian women’s football in world: migration, management and mixed identity

This special issue has grown out of an ongoing Nordic collaborative research project (Nordcorp) using Scandinavian women’s football as a strategically selected extreme case (of organizational devel ...

Introduction: football studies in a broad perspective of centres and peripheries

On April 8–12, 2010, the Department of Sport Sciences at Malmö University organized two separate, and yet partly coinciding, conferences with ‘Centres and Peripheries in Sport’ (CPS) as the mutual label. Both conferences focused on identities and inequalities in the development of sport. The first conference, commencing on April 8, acknowledged the inconsistencies in Association football between centres and peripheries in the European context. On Saturday April 10, a particular focus on women’s football marked the end of the first and opening of the second conference, which concentrated on the development of women’s sports, with the emphasis on questions of equality and differences. In this Special Issue of Soccer & Society we focus on the first part of the conference with presentations that dealt with questions of identity, inequalities, future progress and problematic developments in football. In that respect, we hope that the legacy of the football conference will be maintained and that the discussion will continue and invite more football researchers. The aim of the ‘Development of Football: Commercialization, Culture and Identity (April 8–10, 2010)’ was expressed as follows:

Glocal culture, sporting decline? Globalization and football in Scandinavia

Abstract This chapter looks at how globalization has affected and shaped the domestic elite level male football cultures of Scandinavia since the game turned more professional in the region. By drawing on empirical examples from the recent histories of Norwegian, Swedish and, to a lesser extent, Danish football, the authors analyse how the sporting cultures of these countries have changed since the 1970s. The amateur ideologies which had previously dominated football in Scandinavia faded during a period when influences from international and especially professional English football intensified. These influences stretched from playing styles to spectator cultures. While these influences initially made clubs and teams from Scandinavia more competitive in international football, the ‘hypercommodification’ which has dominated top level European football in the new millennium has to a large extent affected Scandinavian football in a negative way in terms of sporting competitiveness. Simultaneously the authors argue that global influences have injected significant fuel and new energy to the spectator cultures evident in a large number of Scandinavian football club communities.