Small Worlds of Football
Amateur football as a research network
About us
The most recent estimates, dating from 2006, put the number of organised footballers worldwide at around 265 million. However, it is clear that only a very small percentage of these players can be described as professional. For the vast majority, participation in football takes place at a non-professional (or amateur) level. To say that non-professional football receives little attention in academic research is, quite simply, an understatement: Amateur players at local level, particularly those who are not integrated into the formal organisational structures of clubs and associations, remain a largely marginal and little-studied or understood phenomenon.
The international research network “Small Worlds: Football at the Grassroots in a Comparative European and Global Perspective" was launched in 2015 by researchers from Germany, the UK and Ireland to provide a space – or a discursive framework – for new, innovative perspectives on non-professional football from various disciplinary angles within the social sciences. Our group therefore focuses primarily on this rarely studied dimension of football culture.
Publications
Brandt, Christian/Naglo, Kristian (2025): Patrons in German lower-league football: a qualitative case study. Soccer & Society, 1–12. DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2024.2446057
Naglo, Kristian/Krossa, Anne Sophie (2024): (Im)possibilities of democratic education: unity and difference in the social spaces of organised football. In: How can participatory political education for teenagers and young adults be successfully implemented in football? Edited by Fabian Fritz / Birger Schmidt / Simon Walter / Markus Zwecker. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 151–165
Naglo, Kristian (2023): On the Psychology of the Amateur Football Pitch. In: ‘Psychology of Spaces’ section, Psychologie heute. Beltz: Weinheim
Naglo, Kristian / Krossa, Anne Sophie (2021): Perceptions of Integration in the Glocal World of Football. In: Beyer, Peter (ed.): Globalisation/Glocalisation: Developments in Theory and Application: Essays in Honour of Roland Robertson. Brill: Leiden, pp. 218–236
Naglo, Kristian/Porter, Dilwyn (2020): Amateur football in transition: crisis, transformation and social entrepreneurship in a German–English comparison. In: Kotthaus, Jochem/Brandt, Christian/Naglo, Kristian (eds.): Amateur Football – Football for Amateurs. In: Special issue of the journal ‘Fußball und Gesellschaft – FuG’, 1/2020, pp. 42–64 https://doi.org/10.3224/fug.v2i1.03
Kotthaus, Jochen/Brandt, Christian/Naglo, Kristian (eds.) (2020): Amateur Football – Football for Amateurs. In: Special issue of the journal *Fußball und Gesellschaft* – FuG, 1/2020
Naglo, Kristian/Porter, Dilwyn/Mittag, Jürgen (eds.) (2019): Small Worlds: Football at the Grassroots in Europe. Special issue of the journal *Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements*, 61/2019
Zifonun, Dariuš/Naglo, Kristian (2019): Core Activity, Event and Crisis: Making the Small Worlds of Amateur Football. In: Naglo, Kristian/Porter, Dilwyn/Mittag, Jürgen (eds.): Small Worlds: Football at the Grassroots in Europe. Special issue of the journal *Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements*, 61/2019, 61–82
Naglo, Kristian (2017): ‘Soccer’s Small Worlds’. In: ‘Aspiration and Reflection: Sport Historians on Sports History’. In: Dichter, Heather / Vamplew, Wray (eds.): Special Issue of the *International Journal of the History of Sport*, 34:5–6, 414–419, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2017.1378185
Contact
Dr Kristian Naglo
Sorbic Institute e. V. / Serbski institut z.t.
Bahnhofstr. 6
02625 Bautzen/Budyšin
kristian.naglo(at)serbski-institut.de
Prof. Dr Dilwyn Porter
Emeritus Professor of Sports History and Culture,
International Centre for Sports History and Culture,
Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities,
De Montfort University,
Leicester, LE1 9BH
Dilwyn.Porter2@dmu.ac.uk
Christian Brandt
Researcher
University of Bayreuth
Institute of Sports Science
Chair of Sports Science II – Sport Governance and Event Management
95440 Bayreuth, Christian.brandt@uni-bayreuth.de
Prof. Dr Jochem Kotthaus
Professor of Educational Science, Dortmund
University of Applied Sciences and Arts,
Department of Applied Social Sciences
44047 Dortmund
Jochem.kotthaus@fh-dortmund.de