The Mandela Soccer Academy: Historical and Contemporary Intersections between Ghana, Lebanon, and the West

Goal dreams: conflicting development imaginaries in Ghanaian football academies

“…Unlike other football academies in Ghana, the main goal of MSA was not to make a profit out of selling the children's playing rights to a different team. Mohammed did not reject offers to buy his players, but his main objective was to leverage football's universal appeal to advance his broader vision of youth and community empowerment (Dubinsky & Schler 2017). As he said, ‘Football is only a tool to get them together, but the main thing is humanity, helping those kids who don't even have books, don't even have clothes.…”

Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Soccer: Web of Science Bibliometric Analysis

“…In general, this cluster aggregates papers related to the social function of sport, with football as a central element of contributions to social development. Even so, we can observe two approaches: on the one hand, we find studies that analyse football as a means of educating and developing people [52][53][54][55] through entrepreneurs who developed educational initiatives in the form of schools or academies [56,57]. Innovative football-based programmes can promote ethical and civic values while improving the health and well-being of participants [54,[58][59][60].…”

“…"Football has become a bridge between communities, and a vehicle for mobilising national and transnational solidarities that cut across deep-seated ethnic divides" [56]. In the existing literature in our search collection, a collaboration between countries with football as both a means and an end has been a topic of interest for academics and professionals in recent years [67].…”