Fighters and Footballers
This chapter explores the history of football in London and the participation of migrants and ethnic minorities within it. It explains that migrant participation in football acts as a key symbol of the relationship between migration and globalization, illustrating the forces of multiculturalism and racism in action. It resembles other aspects of the migration history of the British capital in the sense that the period before the Second World War and even before the 1980s appears one dominated by the white British in terms of the professionals who played this sport. However, as in the case of much else in the migration history of London, scratch below the surface and there emerges a longer history of migrant participation involving the Irish in particular, as well as a few people of Jewish, African, and Caribbean origin. The global and multi-ethnic football team has thus become the norm by the end of the twentieth century, symbolized especially by Arsenal and Chelsea fielding teams consisting almost entirely of foreigners by 1999.