Following the ball : the migration of African soccer players across the Portuguese colonial empire, 1949-1975 / Todd Cleveland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cleveland, Todd, author.

Series:

Research in international studies. Global and comparative studies series ; no. 16.

Ohio University research in international studies. Global and comparative studies series ; no. 16

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Soccer--Portugal--History--20th century.

Soccer.

Soccer players--Africa, Portuguese-speaking--History--20th century.

Soccer players.

Emigration and immigration.

History.

Portugal--Emigration and immigration--History--20th century.

Portugal.

Portuguese-speaking Africa.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 266 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, [2017]

Summary:

Todd Cleveland incorporates labor, sport, diasporic, and imperial history to examine the extraordinary experiences of African football players from Portugal's African colonies as they relocated to the metropole from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975. The backdrop was Portugal's increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, and its attendant use of the players as propaganda to communicate the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies. Cleveland zeroes in on the ways that players, such as the great Eusebio, creatively exploited opportunities generated by shifts in the political and occupational landscapes in the waning decades of Portugal's empire. Drawing on interviews with the players themselves, he shows how they often assumed roles as social and cultural intermediaries and counters reductive histories that have depicted footballers as mere colonial pawns. To reconstruct these players' transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multi-continental space in a single analytical field, the book unearths structural and experiential consistencies and contrasts, and illuminates the components and processes of empire.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Foundations

The Introduction and Consumption of Soccer in Lusophone Africa 22

Chapter 2 Engaging with the Game

African Practitioners in the Colonies 47

Chapter 3 Following the Ball, Realizing a Goal

From the Colonies to the Metropole 84

Chapter 4 Successes, Setbacks, and Strategies

Football and Life in the Metropole 126

Chapter 5 Calculated Conciliation

Apoliticism in a Politically Charged Context 176.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780896803138

0896803139

9780896803145

0896803147

OCLC:

982091678