Introduction

Sport and diplomacy have been mutually intertwined in transnational networks of governance and competition – not just on the field of play – and the non-governmental bodies controlling the sport play an important role within the relationship between soccer and diplomacy. The repeated uses of the game of soccer by so many states across the globe, spanning every continent reveals how integral the sport is to international relations. As soccer has pursued a goal of global engagement to consolidate its position as the world’s preeminent sport in the past century, it has increasingly had to reckon or negotiate with the nation-state. Simultaneously, as state sovereignty has been challenged by the constituent and much debated forces of globalization so have longstanding characteristics of soccer’s operation – most notably in a contested relationship between the national, regional and international level. This introduction addresses those aspects and provides an overview of the book.