Current essay deals with the development of soccer as a favorite game of the millions of people all over the world. In introduction we observe basic questions that will be risen in our paper, prove the relevance of chosen topic and theoretical and practical significance. In the first part of the main body of the text we provide readers with historical background of soccer’s development and its evolution starting from its foundation in England, institutalization in national and international championships and tournaments.
The main emphasis is put on the analysis of rules dynamics, soccer’s symbols and traditions. In the following section of our research paper we start the analysis of soccer’s development in different continents including Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America and North America. The main emphasis is put on the development of national championship, soccer clubs, fan clubs, mass character of translations, transformation of symbols, traditions, game’s strategy, techniques and other approaches. In the fourth chapter some close attention is paid specifically for the development of soccer in such countries as Argentina, Portugal and Brazil.
The fifth chapter is devoted to the analysis of interesting and relevant issues of the reasons of low popularity of soccer in the United States where other sports like baseball and basketball are dominant. Finally, based on the collected information and conducted analysis we make conclusions of our research paper where we summarize its main findings, future directions and necessary shortcomings if they exist.
The thesis of our paper is that the development of soccer was uneven and complex process characterized by its fusion with various national traditions and peculiarities. Notwithstanding this fact, soccer quickly became the most popular sport over the world and the Mecca for all fans and amateurs. As our research suggests it happened not by chance but as a predictable result of a unique combination of soccer’s exciting character, complex nature and interesting rules.
Introduction
The incredible popularity of soccer has a “historical” dimension dealing with changes that have taken place in global culture and social movements on the American scene at the present time. Football now reflects the basic, underlying cultural dynamics of contemporary America. Football is urban, it uses “educated” players, it is complex, specialized, violent and sexy. In football every second counts, as it does in America, where “time is money.” And soccer has another important virtue — it televises well. In all these respects it reflects values and impulses that are now dominant. It is now even more American than baseball and other sports. These changes line up with the values people find in football. Baseball became irrelevant. Soccer provides people with an opportunity to let off steam, to get rid of tensions, to have what is called a “catharsis.”
The history of soccer goes back to 2-3 century BC when Chinese performed the same techniques as modern players. Also, “soccer” was popular in Roman Empire and medieval Europe. “During the second part of the 19th century in England, rugby as well as most sports experienced a massive surge in popularity. This was mostly an effect of the Industrial Revolution, which drew people in cities and factories, depriving them from the typical outdoor activities of rural life” (Expert Football 2008). the first unified rules were developed in 1858 in England at Cambridge University. In 1853, the first football association was formed. During the same period of time, soccer became popular in Australia where football players developed Victorian rules of the game (Expert Football 2008).
During the 1920s, for the first time, school became the center of teen social life. The number of curriculum-related clubs began to decline as the number of social organizations and activities increased. Athletics, especially football, became the dominant unifying force for high school students; boosting the team was the duty of all students in all grades, and the athletes themselves were the stars of school life. Football was still a sport played only in wealthier high schools and colleges, but it was becoming popular across the country as fans followed their college teams to victory. Being a teen football star was becoming a ticket to national fame. The big Eastern colleges built huge stadiums to hold the thousands who attended their games, and smaller schools tried to do the same, sometimes with disastrous financial consequences if they did not produce winning teams. The need to recruit winning players grew from this period in the history of the sport.
In modern sense, soccer was developed only in 1960s. “On October 1963, eleven London clubs and schools sent their representatives to the Freemason’s Tavern. These representatives were intent on clarifying the muddle by establishing a set of fundamental rules, acceptable to all parties, to govern the matches played amongst them. This meeting marked the birth of The Football Association” (Soccer History and Information 2008). Certainly, sporting culture and especially soccer culture have long been seen to embody certain values and principles which have been taken as blueprints for living. Increasingly, as the twentieth century has drawn to a close, the intervention of various social forces (the market, the media, the law, the state) into the once ‘private’ area of sporting culture has been perceived to be transforming that particular cultural domain or ‘field’ (Expert Football 2008).
Critics admit that proliferation of soccer to other countries was caused by the increased influence of England and the English language. People adopted English culture and values, borrowed its traditions and games. The European countries joined the first Football Association were the Netherlands and Denmark (1889), New Zealand (1891), Argentina (1893), Chile (1895), Belgium (1895), Italy (1898), Germany and Uruguay (1900), Hungary (1901) and Finland (1907) (Soccer History and Information 2008). The international Football Association was founded in 1904, and marked the global development of the soccer culture. Today, FIFA includes 204 states from all continents (Expert Football 2008).
When news came that the pro football’s strike of 1970 was settled, it was a source of great relief for millions of fans. For a while it looked as if there would be no season. Sports pundits were predicting a season of re-runs, replays, computer games and other absurdities, and football owners and television networks were going crazy, having “withdrawal of revenue” nightmares. But finally an accommodation was reached and the pros were to play for us again. This great scare phenomenon is extremely interesting. Since the fans would still have had college football to watch, they would not have been deprived of all television football. The reason the threatened strike seemed calamitous, I think, is that professional football is more than a mere sport — it is a religion of sorts which expresses a philosophy that orients viewers to the world and explains how it “runs.”
College football, in this respect, is like a lay church. It functions the same way, but without a professional clergy it is not quite as satisfying (Hjalm et al 415). With political decay also came a drastic slowdown in sport participation. By the late nineteenth century, however, sport was alive and well in northern Italy. Many sport clubs had already grouped themselves into federations. The most popular federation, in terms of number of participants, was the football (soccer) federation which was founded in 1885. The years when the Italians were organizing their sport federations coincided with the period of heavy Italian emigration. Some four million Italians came to the United States between 1899 and 1924, with over two million returning to Italy during the same period. The persistent discrimination the Italians had to endure is demonstrated by the fact that, when the Nativists were able to carry the day by stopping the huge emigration from southern and eastern Europe, the yearly quota assigned to Italians was only 3,845. Following Levendis:
“Nationalism and the quest for independent political identity can been exemplified in the Catalan separatist movement, and in the team named after their biggest city, Barcelona. During his reign Generalissimo Franco threw his political power behind his favorite club, Real Madrid, the rivals of Barcelona” (Levendis 86).
Asian countries and Africa joined FIFA during the post war period (after the WWII). Thanks to the miracle of television (which has made football — professional and college — so much a part of the way of life) fans are treated from time to time to real-life dramas of great passion and poignancy. These countries are given of professional football coaches pacing nervously along the sidelines, giving frantic orders to various lesser coaches and other millions. When their teams are doing poorly, their agonies tear at the heartstrings. Furthermore, coaches pass from one “identity” to another, eventually, except for a few geniuses who do not experience the agony along the sidelines. During 1950-1960s, soccer became a part of the Chinese and Japanese culture (Expert Football 2008). “However, when Iran–lead by a foreign, non-Muslim coach–beat Australia in World Cup qualifying in 1997, things would change. Iranians ran into the streets celebrating. Some women threw off their head-coverings, and celebrated right next to the men” (Levendis 85)..
Soccer was popular in Australia since 1900s but had no a great impact on the national culture and traditions. In Latin America, soccer was popular since 1930s-1950s. The hyperreality of televised sports culture and commonly taken as innately a ‘bad’ thing, a development which undermines what is recalled as ‘real’ soccer, ‘real’ sport, ‘real’ culture (Levendis 86). The crux of that contemporary debate in the mid-1970s—and, in fact, was the extent to which television programs in general, and sports coverage in particular, were not so much a record of events as socially constructed phenomena (Soccer History and Information 2008). At the time of the 1978 finals in Argentina, as the venue controversially moved to the then reviled authoritarian South American regime, two contrasting European perspectives were developed on the World Cup. Critics, focusing on Argentina 1978, explicitly built on the BFI study, theorizing television as ‘never exactly a reproduction of’ a cultural event but ‘always, in some way or other, a representation’, recognizing nevertheless that ‘the prejudice dies hard that television is there to reproduce; that its subject is given reality’ (Hjalm et al 415). Critics noted the irony of holding the World Cup finals in a country where government and other groups’ terror reigned and citizens frequently ‘disappeared’ (Garland and Rowe 335).
Soccer penetrated the American continent at the end of 19th century and was brought by English immigrants. The first league champions took place in 1894. Critics admit that the USA hasten change in European football culture, which itself is hurtling towards continent-wide super leagues controlled by international media. It creates a male dominated post-youth culture, the tradition of exploring the links between law and popular culture which has been done so well in the arena of cricket (Garland and Rowe 335).
For a long time, soccer was a game the Italians of the old and new world played with passion and skill. It is doubtful that the first wave of immigrants played the game with much regularity. But later immigrants brought with them the knowledge and love for the sport which was very popular in Italy at the turn of the century. During the 1920s, many Italian soccer clubs had been established in the Italian neighborhoods of many eastern cities. In 1929 the Italian Soccer Club was organized in Chicago. This team, according to the organizers, was the first step in uniting the Italian soccer players into a club of their own. Previously, many Italian players had been playing for teams of other ethnic groups. St. Louis was also a hotbed of soccer in the 1920s, and Italians of the second generation were conspicuous by their participation (Soccer History and Information 2008; Shugart 4).
During the 1928-29 season, the first in which players from the Hill played together defending Calcaterra Undertakers colors, they won the city title. This was no small accomplishment. The Germans and the Irish had played soccer in St. Louis for many years and were proud of their records. Yet the Italians established superiority in the sport. According to historian Gary R. Mormino, by 1955 the Hill had spawned a half dozen professional baseball players—Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra being the most famous—twice that number of professional soccer players, and several national soccer club championships (Levendis 86). In New York City, because of the large Italian immigrant population, soccer clubs had been active for a long time. Yet the most amazing event in early Italian soccer participation took place in 1909 when the Coal City Maroons Soccer Club, which had been active since the turn of the century in that downstate Michigan Italian mining community, challenged and tied the Olympic Soccer Champs from England who had won their title in 1908 (Glamser and Vincent 31).
In 1925 soccer teams were started in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg (the latter called the “Hammer and Sickle Club”), and smaller centers such as Oshawa, Renfrew, Kirkland Lake, Lethbridge, Sylvan Lake (the “Red Hope Club”), and Drumheller reported field days, team games, boxing clubs, swimming parties, picnics, and “tramps” or hikes. By 1926 WSAs were established in 17 centers. The Toronto WSA operated a seven-team softball league, with two teams of cigar makers, one of jewelers, one from the Earlscourt Labour Party, and three WSA teams. The Montreal WSA fielded senior and junior soccer and basketball leagues and attracted a large following. “You didn’t have to be a communist to go to Fletcher’s Field on a Saturday afternoon and cheer for the WSA,” one participant has remembered. During the 1930s the Toronto and Montreal WSA soccer teams played each other on an annual basis, and these games attracted crowds as large as 5,000. (Montreal usually won.) Games were followed by speeches, songs, a collection, and an invitation to the WSA dance in the evening (Belka 3; Soccer History and Information 2008).
The WSAs encouraged a diversity of activity, but the staple was the mass drills, acrobatics, and stunts of gymnastics. The great majority of WSA members were eastern European immigrants for whom these were familiar, if not favorite, activities. Gymnastics could be practiced almost anywhere, in back‐ yards, community halls, and parks (Briley 134). Routines could be set to music and combined with choral and theatrical performances in movement “concerts” of great appeal (Glamser and Vincent 31). In Toronto, a Jewish Workers’ Sports Club held competitions in the “Olympic” events, but elsewhere gymnastics were pursued for mass exercise and display (Majer-O’Sickey 82). Usually an entire group would participate in sequences of carefully coordinated field or floor exercises, while smaller groups and individuals would perfect statue posing, and apparatus, tumbling, and acrobatic stunts: hand and head balancing; teeter, trapeze, and trampoline twists and spins; and sometimes juggling. The most frequently performed routine was the multiperson pyramid, which the YCL encouraged because it was believed to depict the importance of working class solidarity during the class struggle (Lopes 239).
This regulation of the soccer field has occurred alongside apparently contradictory and confusing processes of ‘privatisation and deregulation of hitherto public areas of concern and provision’, as critical legal theorists have sharply observed. Disciplinary fields within formerly ‘black letter law’ parts of the law school curriculum—looking at the legal instances of these processes—have also emerged, such as sports law, media law and entertainment law, with their specialist practitioners, associations and journals, as professional lawyers have colonised ever more areas of social life and the American culture of ‘litigiousness’ has spread to Europe (Merkel 69).
In the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, British soccer was probably best known globally for the phenomenon of soccer violence associated with a proportion of its spectators. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the mass media gradually created a consensus about the ‘disappearance’ of soccer-related violence which was based on stereotypical reporting almost as grotesque as the moral panics which had proclaimed, and sustained, the ‘golden ages (Briley 134; Pleban and Wiersma 23). Critics admit that today
“World soccer is based upon the English model in which leagues are open. Depending upon a team’s performance, it is possible to move up and down within league hierarchies. This more competitive model owes its origins to the conflict between amateurism and professionalism within English soccer. This division was papered over with a unified governing body” (Briley 134).
The noticeable shift since the watershed month of May in 1985—when Birmingham, Brussels and even Bradford, in initial media accounts, became tragically entwined as instances of the so-called ‘English Disease’, later to be parodied on LP by Adrian Sherwood’s Barmy Army—is not the mass media exposure of soccer as a sport with specific social problems such as hooligan violence, but rather the marked redrawing of the boundaries of the largely ‘private’, heavily gendered world of professional soccer as an industry (Pollard 169).
Economic, political and, specifically, legal regulation are involved in this redefinition of the domain of the ‘social’, as most aspects of the soccer business find themselves being reshaped for the brave new era that beckoned in the single European (sports labor) market (Brown 134). In England, since 1985 alone, five important pieces of what might be called ‘football legislation’ have been enacted. The narratives embedded in the texts of the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act 1985, Public Order Act 1986, Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987, Football (Offences) Act 1991 and, eventually after much controversy, the Football Spectators Act 1989, taken together with the two investigations undertaken by Mr Justice Popplewell (interim and final) and the two reports by Lord Justice Taylor on the Hillsborough disaster (interim and final), amount to a vast body of official ‘stories’ about the control of soccer as a global business in the late twentieth century (Soccer History and Information 2008).
Further, the rhetorics of this official discourse, in the English scenario are, significantly, marked by a designation of soccer culture as equivalent to ‘disorder’ or ‘violence’ (Brown 134; Quinn and Carr 13). The articles written around the subsequent World Cup Finals which reflect this apparently incremental process of ‘mediatisation’ are largely in the academic field of mass communications, media or cultural studies (Glamser and Vincent 31; Shugart 4). After the 1974 finals in West Germany, a pamphlet called ‘Football on Television’ was produced by Edward Buscombe which comprised a study of television coverage of the 1974 World Cup, eventually won by the hosts in the final against the ‘total football’ of Holland (Buraimo 204; Terrell 14; Soccer History and Information 2008). Following Briley “the competitive nature of world soccer contributes to financial problems for many soccer clubs and leagues, while Major League Baseball’s current economic health is sound” (134).
Soccer traditions in Brasil, Portugal and Argentina
In this section we will outline basic trends of soccer development in such important soccer countries as Brazil, Portugal and Argentina. It will help us to defend the initial thesis of the paper.
Soccer in Brazil
There is no denying the importance of the fact that soccer is very popular in Brazil though this country was not founder of this game. First of all, one of the main preconditions of these developments is not the policy of Brazilian national federation of football but the number of people which engage in the football culture in this country. Football is played everywhere and especially in poor suburbs of Brazilian cities where it become the substitute for other cultural activities.
Brazilian national team encourages many young people to tie their life with football as they see themselves as the heirs of such football stars as Pele, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Romario and others. Brazilian National Team is the most prominent in the world since it won FIFA World Cup in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002 years which is the greatest achievements among all national teams in the world (Lopes, 2000, p. 245).
Brazil is often referred by foreigners as football country. It is notable that more than 10,000 people play football professionally in Brazil and in other countries.
Besides this, it should be noted that football in Brazil has significant impact on the development of overall Brazilian cultural traditions. Even politicians often try to use World Cups as the source of bringing nations together for support of special candidate who is described as a great football supporter and fan. Many former footballers are often elected at the most prominent and influential state and legislative positions in Brazil.
Another phenomenon peculiar to Brazilian football is its national championship which due to country’s size and the lack of good communication between provinces is often neglected and is replaced by different Cups and tournaments. Considering this fact, it is strange how Brazil managed to create such strong national teams during the history of its soccer.
Due to abovementioned conditions and peculiarities Brazil can be described as football nation par excellence.
Football in Portugal
As of 19th century the football in Portugal became popular after Portuguese students came back home from England and played it. The exhibition of the new game was organized by Pinto Basto in 1888 and he also was the organizer of the first football match in Portugal. This match feature two rivals – Portugal and England and the former won the latter. In this way Portuguese football tradition was founded.
After that the process of football development in Portugal became rapid and was implemented in schools, colleges. New football clubs were created such as Clube Lisbonense, Braco de Prate and many others. The first Portuguese club which played abroad was the Clube Internacional de Futebol which defeated Madrid’s team in 1907 and become famous in Europe.
The dominant domestic tournament is Portuguese League where few teams such as SL Benfica, Porto and Sporting are predominant. These teams are not very successful in European tournaments such as Champions League but more successful in their participation in UEFA cup. The oldest professional team in Portugal which is not very successful now is Boavista which was created in 1903.
There is no denying the importance of the fact that Portuguese national team has recently became one of the most influential in Europe and global football arena. Now Portugal provides the world with the best football players such as Ronaldinho, Rui Costa etc. Portuguese national team was the 7th football country in the world among 205 ranked FIFA countries.
Besides this, it should be noted that Portugal hosted such important tournament as EURO 2004 and were defeated by Greece in the final. Portugal managed to reach ½ stage in World Cups – first in 1966 when Eusebio played and recently (The Birmingham Post, 2004).
Why the soccer is not popular in the United States?
The issue of the reasons why soccer was not destined to become a dominant or even minimally popular sport in the United States is very complex and controversial.
To understand it we should analyze multifaceted and interdisciplinary problematic of culture, history, traditions, mindset and the way of life.
First of all, it should be mentioned that soccer was among the first sports that were tried in the United States after it gained its independence. But the history of soccer in the United States began only after its institutalization which in its turn is tied with foundation of the first soccer club in 1862 called Oneida Football Club located in Boston, Massachusetts. It is difficult to find out what rules were used by this club as the first standard rules were formulated by English Football Association. It is claimed that Oneida formulated the rules which later were described as Boston Game in which not only kicking the ball was allowed by feet but also carrying it with hands which is now strongly prohibited in the modern soccer.
The first football match that was played in the United States was between Princeton and Rutgers Universities in 1869 (Gardner, 1996). The number of players was 25 persons on both sides which made the game ‘messy’ and alike rugby. All these soccer undertakings in the United States as the history shows would be transformed in what later would be called American football.
Early developed leagues in the United States carried the name ‘football’, for instance: the American Football Association, American Amateur Football Association etc. However, the world soccer soon became the most widespread description of football competitions. In 1945 both mentioned Football Associations merged and created American Soccer Association which became the centre of soccer development in the United States (Pollard, 2006). In 1967 two new soccer leagues were created such as United Soccer Association and National Professional Soccer League. Later they merged and formed North American Soccer League. As we see, the development of soccer in the United States followed several stages and was not always successful as quick deconstruction of big soccer leagues proves. In these conditions indoor soccer as one of the possible variation of ordinary soccer became dominant in 80s and 90s as it was more convenient for organizers and attracted more public unlike big soccer events.
Therefore, as we see, among the major factors that greatly contributed to not very high popularity of soccer in the United States is American desire to show the own independence from British tradition as they were reflected in game patterns. However, baseball is also popular in Britain it was never regarded as adult sport but was considered to be the prevalent domain of children. Hence, it should be said that American own national spirit and tradition helped develop their own national sports which have much fans and supporters all over the world.
There is no denying the importance of the fact that American desire not to be like British in their sport life had negative consequences for the development of such wonderful and interesting game as soccer surely is in the United States. However, it would be shortsightedly to ascribe all negative reaction to soccer in the United States and the lack of its popularity just to historical controversies with Britain. As it was noted above, the situation is much more complex and controversial.
It should be mentioned that sometimes there existed and even exist now anti-soccer campaigns which are designed and realized to promote negative attitudes towards soccer in youth and to orient them into choosing such traditional for the United States kind of sports such as baseball, American football, basketball etc.
Today, even many anti football sites in the Internet exists which use new technologies to promote negative description of soccer as a game. It is often referred to in gender terms as a ‘game of girl’ – in this way, boy are forced to change their ambitions with other sports not to be mocked out by their classmates and friends. By these means, the campaign against the development of soccer in the United States was so effective by far. However, it should be noted that these negative campaigns can divert people who love to play soccer from their desire and serve as effective tool for preventive anti football actions.
Moreover, if such trend exists, it shows that soccer is regarded by other sports representatives as a potential rival. Besides gender descriptions of soccer, soccer’s haters often claimed that it is communist sport and hence should be neglected and afraid of. The situation was mildly changed after 1994 when the United States first held Soccer World Cup and it proved to be successful for Brazil which won Italy on penalties. During this tournaments new stars of American national team appeared, new journalists attained skills and the new level of soccer popularity and translation in the United States was achieved. However, soccer did not become as popular as hockey, baseball and basketball it attracted new fans and sponsors.
Another important feature of American football should be mentioned to achieve better understanding of the issue. Many Americans play football on a regular basis with their friends and colleagues. But not so many American are regular spectators and fans. It can be explained by the fact that American football teams are not so professional and strong as European ones. Moreover, during its history, American football did not manage to produce the players of world significance such as did England, Brazil and other important football countries. As far as American inability to create good players, it should be explained not by organizational lack of capacities such as football schools and youth clubs but which is more reasonable by the one-dimensional nature of American sports which create players with one specialized skills and functions which is in its turn is inappropriate in soccer where operative and effective players with high creativity and improvisation play (Lopes, 2000).
Whereas American sport culture for the long period of time was dominated by various steroids which were used in various sports, in football they were rarely used by players since they would not give them additional advantages. The best players in soccer were always those players which combined great skills and techniques with good intellectual and psychological capacities.
One of the reasons concerning low popularity of soccer in the United States refers to the fact that Americans historically were more interested and excited by high scoring games such as basketball for example.
Some analytics tie low popularity of soccer in the United States with corruption scandals and a lot of inconsistency that characterized football in early leagues and diverted the interest of fans. Beside this, it should be noted that the soccer’s time format without time-outs and other small brakes was inconvenient for American media industry which is the world’s advertising giant and had not have much desire to loose its profits because of soccer format. Soccer could not become profitable in the United States – hence, it was not welcomed. But, recently the United States came to understand that without joining football trend in the global sport, they will become significantly alienated and hence much of efforts were made to redress the situation. Sporting community does not welcome soccer much since drawn results are very often in this sport.
Among other reasons for soccer being not very popular in the United States is that many sportsmen and fans think that it lacks physical strength and appearance which are regarded as the primary exciting elements in sports for Americans.
One of other famous explanations concern the fact that neither French nor other nationalities that immigrated to the United States and formed its culture did not play football as a dominant game and were unable to construct soccer tradition in the United States.
And finally, among the basic reasons one should mention the fact that American state does not pay much attention to the development of football and did not create any significant program for its development (Levendis, 2006).
After we analyzed the basic reasons for soccer’s unpopular status in the United States the time has come to outline key transformations that occurred recently.
The beginning of 90s saw a great transformation of soccer in the United State as Major League Soccer (MLS) was created. It is the youngest of all existent soccer leagues in the United States and the most popular among them. There are only 13 teams in this league as of 2007 but it ranks 12th place among the most attended premier leagues all over the world.
In 2006 the record of MLS attendance was bitten when more than 90,000 spectators visited Los Angeles Coliseum. With arrival of many international superstars to MLS in 2007 such as David Beckham, the levels of attendance significantly grew for certain MLS teams and the stadiums. TV channels started paying more attention to football than in the past. Besides this, Mexican and American national teams played recently and broke several important regional records on attendance and translation audience. It should be noted that until recently soccer was a regional phenomenon in the United States and was popular mainly among immigrant communities which remember it. But now it gradually becomes popular all over the country due to various youth programs, new success of women’s and men’s national teams.
Conclusions
It is time to return to our initial thesis. As we proceeded through the analysis it became more and more evident that the development of football was not even and easy process and was influenced by various national and cultural traditions. If England historically offered the best conditions for the development of football – it created the game and organized the first tournaments and clubs, such countries as the United States which were successful in other games neglected soccer for much time and even created negative attitudes to it as not so physical and feminine. But as the history showed soccer was enough strong to overcome commercial and other prejudices that were dominant in the American sports culture. In other countries such as Portugal and Brazil soccer found fruitful soil for its massive development transforming these nations in the basic providers of the best players, national teams and soccer traditions.
Besides this, as our analysis has shown the development of football at the global scale was characterized by organization of world football organizations such as FIFA and UEFA which promote football in various countries and sponsored world and continental championships. This was a very important factor of creating favorable conditions for football as universal sport and the wide-spread cultural language of different nations.
As we think, the priorities of soccer’s development are immense as it continues to attract new fans, players and spectators. There is no denying the importance of the fact that the industry which organizes soccer became so influential that it is now impossible to stop its commercialization and future development.
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