International Webinar on 15 September 2022 and Soccer & Society Special Issue on Football Presidents: Towards a Typology of Political Cultures
In football literature, the topic of football club presidents is relatively unexplored when compared to the amount of work on football supporters, players, journalists and even managers. This absence in the literature contrasts with the centrality of those political agents in the public sphere. To be a football president has a strong symbolical meaning in some communities. Frequently, the president is perceived by his community almost as a synonym of the institution he rules. In this context, Christian Bromberger (Le Match du Football. Ethnologied'une passion partisane à Marseille, Naples et Turin, Paris: Editions de La Maison des Sciences de L'Homme, 1995) argues that the success of a president relies on his ability to dialogue with the symbols of local political cultures. Bromberger called this political phenomenon ‘styles of management’. In its political action, the football president ends up trying to represent the values of the clubs and their local community.
In Latin American politics, it is common for politicians to start their political careers as football presidents. The best-known example is that of Maurício Macri, who became president of Argentina after being successful as president of Boca Juniors. In Europe, we can also find similar cases of club politicians ascending from football politics to politics itself. In Italy, we can remember the example of A.C Milan, ruled by Silvio Berlusconi. Here, we are referring to those figures as football presidents, but the term may vary upon the context where it is applied. In Romania, Gigi Becali is another fine example of what we are saying even if he was never a ‘president’ of Steua Bucarest, but its owner.
Therefore, we are expecting to receive proposals from different contexts in different countries to have an international panorama on diverse political cultures and their leaderships. Bringing scholars from different contexts, we hope to foster research on football club presidents and their ‘styles of management’. We also expect a broader understanding of different empirical cases to build a typology of football political cultures. The sub-themes for consideration are given below:
- Club (and local) identity, styles of management and the football club presidents
- Gender politics, masculinities and football club presidents
- Race politics and football club presidents
- Ethnicity and football club presidents
- Prosopography and quantitative analysis of the sociocultural background of football club presidents
- Democracy, elections and football club presidents
- Populisms and football club presidents
- The role of football club presidents in football Economics
- Biographies and memoirs of football club presidents
- Ultras and fan communities and their relationships with football club presidents
