Football as a Global Sport - Essay Example

Football, a global game Is Football a global sport There is much to be understood before ifying Football as global sport. Football traces its origins from the distant past and from many strongholds. Globalization and Sport Globalization is making way in the lives of humans through every aspect of life. Sport is a very effective and important aspect of life. Sport plays a great role in grooming, maintaining and socializing of a human being. Through the sporting activity, individuals can bring out their talent, become famous, and furthermore interact with other members of the society. Why can we call sport as being a global activity is because now the competition level has risen among countries and the events are held nearly throughout the globe without the reason of "popularity" in the region involved. For example, in "Formula One", we have a Finnish champion but there is no "Race-track" present in Finland. Background to the case What is driving sports in the world is more than just fun. In the new era, sport has become a combination of management, responsibility, skill-development, rivalry, strategy, fitness and many more aspects one can think of as this domain can not be limited or confined to a few principles. Football Stadiums are all over the world and people do not hesitate to fill in the stadiums regardless of what so ever the match is. This sport brings in much revenue as well. A single ticket in Manchester for a match between the famous rivals Manchester United and Arsenal can cost well over 500 which is way above many developing economies' GDP per capita. At this stage, the concept of a "Team" is most important. The word team does not refer only to a group of people combined to accomplish a task rather it is an association of individual who socialize and cope with each other's differences to reach the "maximum" achievable. A team consists of members that have different skills so each can be a specialist in any one desired area. The team members also have complementary skills to coordinate well and imply synergy so as lessen or hide an individual's weakness in that of the team's strength. Football History The highlight of the modern sport is "Football". It is the most popular sport of the world. It has players from all across the world. Lets see what football is and how did it trace its origin. Our predecessors have been accustomed to playing a game/sport that involved kicking the ball around a specified area and targeting a desired point. The issue was that one team had to put the ball through and the other had to stop. In the early times the sport was played by almost every Race, Tribe, Stronghold but the rules varied a lot. So we can say that football has been a global sport for quite a time. The earlier versions were the "Chinese game of cuju" and the "Harpastum" as played by the Romans. The need to develop standardized rules was felt in the mid 19th century as the sport was gaining much popularity and was spreading. The first to come up were the Cambridge Rules as many British schools ought to play the game thus uniformity was required. Research Methodology The research will be based on surveys and short interviews with general people from different areas. Selecting this methodology will bypass any bias present in the research. The problem would be to classify the data into groups and arrange it accordingly. The surveys would be internet based and some site visits. We can easily find Football fans across the world and so it would be feasible if shopping Malls are targeted for this purpose. The survey would consist of small questionnaire placed at the exit of the Mall and the public would be required to just give in a few minutes answering the questions if they are interested. Further at other convenient places, small interviews highlighting the sporting events and globalization of Football will be undertaken by an experienced interviewer such that the results could be analyzed and summarized easily. Selection Feasibility Why have I chosen this topic is because Football requires 2 teams, with 11 players each, to be played. It is considered to be the cheapest game to be played without much of injuries. Keeping this view in mind we can easily acquire respondents for our survey. The proposition of random sampling from different areas would suit the research best and doing so would eliminate the bias of respondents favouring the global part only. It is true that football is a popular sport but some may not agree at the point that it is a global game. This extraneous influence is to be kept in mind otherwise there would be misleading orientation to the research involved. The big question on our minds is that why is football a global sport. The point is that its popularity has made it global. Football has encouraged players to compete at international levels and forming alliance with other cultures. In England there are clubs, in fact, these clubs are almost every where in the world ranging from schools - domestic levels. The association responsible for handling the world events is FIFA. Football has enabled much interaction among different cultures as Arsenal (a famous club) has players from different countries speaking different languages and having different norms. It is due to this sport that people have engaged in such cross-border socializing activities. What has made football global can also be proven by the number of fans it has all over the world. Even in countries in the Asia-Pacific which do not compete in Football at all, the European football clubs are much popular. Further the sponsors namely Nike, ADIDAS and more have lead the sport to a higher level as they sponsor the most valuable players. Thus every country is looking for talent within its nation to compete at the top most level. African countries are also hot-listed in these events. Prospects for choosing the sport Just imagine where and how can football be played It can be played anywhere ranging form a ground to muddy beach. All that is required by the sport is a round ball and people willing to enjoy. Football is played by every age group. Men have their leagues, women are not left behind now in any field, and even children have their school clubs as well and compete in tournaments at junior levels. Football can be played on streets and in backyards. Even football can be played at times of war. This sport is loved by everybody and an important factor in this game is that it truly is result oriented and within a short time unlike Cricket which has a form that is played for 5 days and may result in a draw. "The dominance can also be understood as football is present in almost every language. Fuball (German), Ftbol (Spanish), le football (French), voetbal (Dutch), peldroed (Welsh), shuukyuu (Japanese), (Russian). What more can one think of" The time allotted to this project is 4 weeks, 2 weeks for surveys and interviews and 2 for analysis and presentation of the claim. It is true that football is a global sport as football events are watched all over the world and with ever undying craze, further re-enforcing is that fact that Fans travel from continents to watch these matches and at times put precious items at the stake of their hero. Football has lead to an amalgamation between different countries and many have resided their differences in this sport. Playing football is just not playing for fun as now it has international competence and thus it means that playing football is like playing for your country and your nation. Bibliography 1. Giulianotti, R (1999). Football; A Sociology of the global game Polity Press, Cambridge Read More