Goal!

A Cultural and Social History of Modern Football

Koller Brandle, Christian Koller and Fabian Brandle

Narrated by Emil Nicholas Gallina

Available from Audible

Book published by Catholic University of America Press

Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry. The authors explain how football transformed from a sport at elite boarding schools in England to become a pastime popular with the working classes, enabling factories such as the Thames Iron Works and the Woolwich Arsenal to give birth to the teams that would become the Premier League mainstays known as West Ham United and Arsenal. They also explore how the age of amateur soccer ended and, with the advent of professionalism, how football became a sport dominated by big clubs with big money and with an international audience.

There are intense rivalries in soccer, such as that in Glasgow, Scotland, between (Catholic) Celtic and (Protestant) Rangers, and the authors examine closely the social causes that make for such passionate fans. The book also discusses the use of soccer for political purposes, such as in Hitler's Germany and Franco's Spain. And — given the long-standing association of soccer as a man's sport and the rise of women's soccer, especially in the United States — the authors look at the gendered history of the world's most popular sport. This book, which will appeal to all connoisseurs of soccer, provides a lens through which to view the social and cultural history of modern Europe.

Christian Koller is director of the Swiss Social Archives and adjunct professor of modern history at the University of Zurich.

Fabian Brandle works for the Atelier for Direct Democracy at St. Ursanne.

REVIEWS:

“This fascinating history of football in its social and cultural context offers many fresh insights. Grounded in sound scholarship, but written in an engaging and accessible style, it will be of considerable interest to football fans as well as being a core text for courses in sports history.”

—Wyn Grant, University of Warwick and coeditor of The Transformation of European Football

“This fascinating history of football in its social and cultural context offers many fresh insights. Grounded in sound scholarship, but written in an engaging and accessible style, it will be of considerable interest to football fans as well as being a core text for courses in sports history.”

—Wyn Grant, University of Warwick and coeditor of The Transformation of European Football