Playing for and against the nation

Football in interwar Romania

Bibliographic Data

ID11049036
AuthorsFlorin Faje (0000-0002-2885-9656, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume43
Issue1
Pages160-177
Publication date2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNationalities Papers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5992 • E-ISSN: 1465-3923
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/00905992.2014.937684
OpenAlexW2034090223
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited21

The article explores the development of football in interwar Romania, stressing its role in the dissemination and grounding of Romanian nationalism. I show how, due to its modular form, the game of football was deeply involved in the efforts of centralizing, territorializing and naturalizing the Romanian nation-state of the interwar period. The founding of the leading Romanian sports club at the University of Cluj and the selection of the national representative for the Paris Olympics of 1924, in conjunction with the institutional infrastructure developed to nationally regulate and control the game, are used to present the acute tensions between local/regional and national aspirations and projects, with a strong ethnic component, that have shaped the history of the game in Romania. I argue that the increasing calls for the full Romanianization of football in the 1930s have their immediate roots in these tensions and frictions

Club · Football · Interwar period · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Romanian · Sociology · State (computer science · World War II · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society