As the most popular mass spectator sport across the world, soccer generates key moments of significance on and off the field, encapsulated in events that create metaphors and memories, with wider social, cultural, psychological, political, commercial and aesthetic implications. Since its inception as a modern game, the history of soccer has been replete with events that have changed the organization, meanings and impact of the sport. The passage from the club to the nation or from the local to the global often opens up transnational spaces that provide a context for studying the events that have 'defined' the sport and its followers. Such defining events can include sporting performances, decisions taken by various stakeholders of the game, accidents and violence among players and fans, and invention of supporter cultures, among other things.
The present volume attempts to document, identify and analyse some of the defining events in the history of soccer from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. It revisits the discourses of signification and memorialization of such events that have influenced society, culture, politics, religion, and commerce.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Soccer & Society.
About the Author: Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Professor of History at West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India. Formerly a Fellow of the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne (2010) and of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata (2006-2009 & 2013-2015), he is also Deputy Executive Editor of Soccer & Society (Routledge).
Souvik Naha is Assistant Professor (Research) at the Department of History, Durham University. His current research is about the role of sport in postcolonial diplomacy between Britain and India. He edits Sport in Society and Sport in History and is presently compiling two collections of essays on contemporary cricket.
