Chasing the ball: The motivations, experiences and effects of migrant professional footballers

Richard Elliott

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Published conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

When the English Premier League’s then 22 teams engaged in their first weekend of matches in August 1992, only 13 non-British players made appearances. John Jensen, Jan Stejskal, Anders Limpar, Craig Forrest, Peter Schmeichel, Andrei Kanchelskis, Robert Warzycha, Eric Cantona, Ronnie Rosenthal, Michel Vonk, Gunnar Halle, Roland Nilsson and Hans Segers formed a distinct group of relative outsiders who were selected to play in the league’s first games. English football was transformed after 1992, however, and the new money, glamour and media exposure that quickly enveloped the league soon attracted an increasing number of foreign players to ply their skills within it. Indeed, by the Premier League’s 2001/02 season, foreign player appearances outnumbered those being made by their indigenous counterparts (Elliott, 2009), and by the conclusion of the 2012/13 season foreign players accounted for over 60% of the overall playing personnel (Poli et al., 2013). In a little over 20 years, the English Premier League had become one of the most cosmopolitan sports leagues in the world.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication Football and Migration
Subtitle of host publicationPerspectives, places, players
EditorsRichard Eliott, John Harris
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter2
Number of pages15
ISBN (Electronic)9781315816388
ISBN (Print)9780415739788
Publication statusPublished - 19 Sept 2014

Publication series

NameRoutledge Research in Sport, Culture and Society
PublisherRoutledge

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