The spread of COVID-19 and the consequent pandemic since early 2020 have brought about unprecedented changes in all spheres of global life, creating a new sense of (in)security with social distancing, physical isolation, quarantine and lockdown becoming buzzwords to combat the disease. As in all spheres of life, the first wave of the pandemic posed serious challenges to the world of soccer, with diverse and intriguing responses across the globe.
This book documents the early impressions and initial responses of various stakeholders of the soccer world to the challenges of COVID-19 in 2020. It reveals how the process of confrontation, negotiation, adjustment and overcoming against such challenges necessitated and inspired novel responses and strong improvisations from soccer bodies to players, referees to spectators, and journalists to sponsors. This process has revealed abrupt as well as radical changes in the organization, rules, spectatorship and telecast of the game, thereby affecting the game’s cultural dimensions, commercial prospects and political implications. The volume points out that the way soccer has adjusted to the ‘new normal’ standard of the ‘COVID Regime’ has elicited newer meanings and nuanced representations of the game.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Soccer & Society.
1. Introduction: COVID-19 and the soccer world Commentaries 2. Football’s dramatic pause - when Saturday doesn’t come 3. The future of officiating: analysing the impact of COVID-19 on referees in world football 4. Football Worlds: business and networks during COVID-19 5. English premier league football clubs during the covid-19 pandemic: business as usual? 6. Football in the time of COVID-19: reflections on the implications for the women’s professional league in Colombia 7. Football is not ‘a matter of life and death’. It is far less important than that. Football and the COVID-19 pandemic in England 8. Football and COVID-19: the effects of the pandemic on training and performance of South American and Brazilian referees Articles 9. Soccer, World War II and coronavirus: a comparative analysis of how the sport shut down 10. The Covid-19 Pandemic and the social life of English Premier League Football Fandom in Eldoret, Kenya 11. The effect of short-term and long-term coronavirus quarantine on physical performance and injury incidence in high-level soccer 12. No sports, no spectators – no media, no money? The importance of spectators and broadcasting for professional sports during COVID-19 13. Professional football in Portugal: preparing to resume after the COVID-19 pandemic 14. Are we all in this together? Footballing ethics in the age of Coronavirus 15. Exploring the sports economic impact of COVID-19 on professional soccer 16. Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a community soccer organization in the United States: the case of Asheville City Soccer Club 17. Home advantage in European soccer without crowd
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 and Society (Routledge).
