Ethnicity and Football - Globalisation

Globalisation

Globalisation has created a sense of homogenised culture in football where players from different ethnic backgrounds have congregated in one particular team. This enables the team to form some kind of "supranational" (Maguire J, 2009) entity that in turns losses its local or national identity but gains a mixture of strengths that ideally improves the team's performance. A good example of this are the teams associated to the Premier League based in England. All of these teams are made up of players from different ethnic groups and are considered the best players in the World. Manchester United were crowned FIFA Club World Cup Champions in 2008 which exemplified the importance of ethnic diversity in a team - only three of the players in their championship game were of English background.

Globalisation has also affected football from a different perspective. John Nauright (2004) explains that during the globalisation process, local and national identity is celebrated especially during significant sporting events such as the Football World Cup. An estimated 715.1 million people from different countries and ultimately ethnic backgrounds watched the Football World Cup in 2006 which makes it the most viewed event in history. This results in businesses looking for opportunities to advertise their brand through sponsorship and funding which leads to commercialism in football.