Football Talk

"Throw a Hail Mary! Pass the pigskin! Catch a pick six! This book presents wacky lingo and puzzling phrases from the football field. Explore the origins of these words and phrases - from 'touchdown' to 'red zone' - and discover how college and pro players use them on the gridiron. "--Back cover.

Who still says 'soccer'; why does 'Arsenal' sound so foreign; who was 'sick as a parrot' first; was Shakespeare the game's first clogger; and what makes footballers better wordsmiths than the Eskimos? The answers to all these and more are revealed in Football Talk, football's first dictionary of words.

Coach Jack Morris was at a complete loss. One week after being hung in effigy for leading the beloved Lincoln Lions to their twenty-fourth straight defeat, Morris was bracing for the Jacktown Giants. Gians by name and by record, they were heralded as the best prep team Ohio had ever seen. Coach Morris was just waiting for the axe to fall. But something bizarre happened when a stranger requested permission to deliver the pregame pep talk. With nothing to lose, Coach Morris agreed. No one could have predicted the result: A motivated team, fighting for pride, fighting for their town, fighting for each other. Though just a fictional football story, The Pep Talk contains universal and inspirational words of truth that apply to every walk of life. Author Kevin Elko makes a living giving the same talk contained in these pages to corporations and athletic teams around the country. Like the characters in this story, Elko's pep talks have changed lives and helped drive teams to national and world championship victories. Empower yourself for success. Empower yourself with The Pep Talk.

Who still says 'soccer'; why does 'Arsenal' sound so foreign; who was 'sick as a parrot' first; was Shakespeare the game's first clogger; and what makes footballers better wordsmiths than the Eskimos? The answers to all these and more are revealed in Football Talk, football's first dictionary of words.

Both a symbol of the Mubarak government’s power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime’s overthrow during the 2011 revolution. With the help of the state, appreciation for football in Egypt peaked in the late 2000s. Yet after Mubarak fell, fans questioned their previous support, calling for a reformed football for a new, postrevolutionary nation. In Egypt’s Football Revolution, Carl Rommel examines the politics of football as a space for ordinary Egyptians and state forces to negotiate a masculine Egyptian chauvinism. Based on several years of fieldwork with fans, players, journalists, and coaches, he investigates the increasing attention paid to football during the Mubarak era; its demise with the 2011 uprisings and 2012 Port Said Massacre, which left seventy-two dead; and its recent rehabilitation. Cairo’s highly organized and dedicated Ultras fans became a key revolutionary force through their antiregime activism, challenging earlier styles of fandom and making visible entrenched ties between sport and politics. As the appeal for football burst, alternative conceptions of masculinity, emotion, and power came to the fore to demand or prevent revolution and reform.

When studying the social phenomena in and around football, five major aspects of globalisation processes become evident: international migration, the global flow of capital, the syncretistic nature of tradition and modernity in contemporary culture, new experiences of time and space and the revolution in information technologies. In an exploration of these themes the collection provides insight into academic studies of football in Portugal, Germany, England, Spain, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA. At examining football-related phenomena under the headings of nations and migration, myths and business, the city and the dream, it shows how modernised football itself is object and subject in processes of both neo-liberal globalisation and counter hegemonic globalisation. While the contributions highlight characteristics of particular local and national contexts, the volume focuses on global centre-periphery-relations and migration trajectories of football professionals by analysing recent developments in post-colonial Portuguese speaking areas: The high ranking of "Portuguese football" not only serves in national(ist) discourses or in order to emancipate the country from a marginal position, it also turns Portugal into a football-talent exporter, confronting it partly with the same ambiguous consequences as Brazil and the African countries, who "lose" their football talents to the European centre. The receiving countries, again, include Portugal. This book was previously published as a special issue of Soccer in Society

What can football among young men in Jamaica tell us about class, wealth, age, and concepts of masculinity? William Tantam presents an ethnographic study of the impact of football on men's lives in contemporary Jamaica. He illuminates how the football field relates to social and economic inequalities, and whether playing football in a mixed group has the effect of levelling the playing field between the more and less economically wealthy.Tantam presents insights into the life histories and football biographies of individuals, the relationship between wealth, education, and class, and explores how socioeconomic inequalities are embodied and enacted. With rich ethnographic detail, he analyses how the experience of watching international football matches and the English Premier League locates groups of spectators in relation to wider movements of capital. The book features case studies of individuals who play football in Jamaica, and penetrates an under-examined area in academic discussion of sport and masculinity. This will be a valuable addition to students of anthropology, sociology, football studies, cultural studies and gender studies.