Angels of Us All? Football Management, Globalization and the Politics of Celebrity

Establishing Athlete Brand Among Female Pakistani Fans

“…Impression management is essential to promoting any athlete as a celebrity (Wagg, 2007), and impression management occurs through the media (Rojek, 2001). So the comments, actions and statements of an athlete count towards impression management.…”

The New Business of Football: A Study of Current and Aspirant Football Club Managers

“…This view emphasises the fundamental importance of the constraining aspects of the social context in which the career of the manager unfolds (Bailyn, 1989;Adamson et al, 1998). Ostensibly, the power relations in clubs, coupled with the wider football culture, results in managers accepting that they are sole locus of explanation if success is not forthcoming (Wagg, 2007). This acceptance occurs despite the fact that recent research evidence on managerial change for the Barclays Premier League suggests that while in the short-term change may lead to a brief reprieve in poor performance, over the longterm, performance deteriorates again due to underlying organisational weaknesses (Hughes et al, 2010).…”

“…Other non-academic literature has focused on the attributes or characteristics of managers: these include contributions by journalists like Grant and Robertson (2010) who contend that there is something distinct about the characteristics of Scottish managers which, among other things, has resulted in their enjoying disproportionate levels of success in English football, as well as academic literature from Bolchover and Brady (2004), who sought to identify the characteristics of managers and the lessons that can be learned for business and management more generally. In juxtaposition, Wagg (2007Wagg ( , 2005 argues that football management is a paradigm, a long-standing myth in football culture that all of a team's performance can be explained by a single factor namely the stewardship of the manager. Elsewhere, Carter (2006Carter ( , 2004Carter ( , 1999 provides detailed accounts of the role and position of the manager over time, while economists have studied the implications of managerial turnover in football on such factors as performance (d 'Addona & Kind, 2012;Audas, Dobson & Goddard, 2002;Bruinshoofd & ter Weel, 2003;de Dios Tena & Forest, 2007;Koning, 2003;Hughes, Hughes, Mellahi, & Guermat, 2010).…”

“Steve, you must feel pig sick!”: Streamed Video Interactions between Premier League Managers and Sports Journalists as Semi-scripted Performances

“…In a recent streamed mini-documen-tary series, embedded in the multimedia section of the online version of The Guardian, senior sports writer Barney Ronay (2009) refers to football managers as "the most important men in the most important sport". Following the rise of certain high profi le managers like Jose Mourinho and Sven-Goran Eriksson, academics have also begun to investigate football management from the point of view of the politics of celebrity (Wagg 2007). Whitsun (1998: 62) defi nes a sports star as "someone whose name and fame have been built up to the point where reference to them […] can serve as a professional booster in itself ".…”