The history of globalization is found in more than international political organizations and multinational corporations, free-trade agrteements and foreign direct investments, satellite communications and special export zones.  When looking at the forces that have driven globalization over the last decades, we must also look to football and especially the World Cup.  Indeed, there is no greater proof of globalization than the fact that a large part of the world’s population cheered or groaned at exactly the same moment, as Mario Götze scored to put Germany ahead of Argentina in this year’s final.

Globalization is an important theme in the volume of essays on the history of football’s premiere tournament, The FIFA World Cup 1930-2010: Politics, Commerce, Spectacle and Identities (Wallstein, 2014).  Coming out of a 2013 conference held at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, the volume boasts an impressive squad of football scholars, coming from universities and research institutes in nine different countries.  After opening essays from David Goldblatt and Alan Tomlinson, the contributors give an in-depth look at each of the World Cup tournaments, from 1930 in Uruguay to 2010 in South Africa.  Credit goes to the volume’s editors, Kay Schiller and Stefan Rinke, for putting together a cohesive, comprehensive, and readable collection of essays, one that can be recommended for students of sports history and curious fans of global football.  In the podcast, we hear from both Kay and Stefan about their colleagues’ findings, the persistent themes in World Cup history, and their expectations for World Cups of the future.