After the crunch: a new era for the beautiful game in Europe?

摘要

In the last two years, the global economy has suffered a major financial crisis which has precipitated a worlda??wide recession. The a??credit cruncha?? has been widely seen as the end of the neoa??liberal regulatory regime introduced in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and a return to the Keynesian management of the immediate posta??War period. There is a wide consensus among scholars writing on football that the organization of the professional game has paralleled wider regulatory regimes. Accordingly, during the 1990s, professional football in Europe was organized on a neoa??liberal, transnational basis in which economic and playing power congregated among a group of super clubs. Following the credit crunch, it seems likely that a new regulatory regime will appear in football. On the basis of current debates and trends, this article explores the character of the emergent political economy of football. Against the sometimes selfa??interested claims of administrators like Michel Platini or Sepp Blatter, it is proposed that football is not rea??entering an era of Keynesian management by national and international federations. Supera??clubs will remain a dominant force in European football. Rather, the new era might be characterized as one of a??regulated transnationalisma??. The major clubs and their transnational interconnections will remain central features of the new era but their activities will be monitored and controlled by a regulatory complex consisting of national and international federations, European institutions, national governments and the clubs themselves. Finally, the article explores how fan cultures are likely to change in the coming decade in the light of the new regulatory regime.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2010.510751