How football fans perceive sports heroes – The case of Israel

Background: Hero-making and hero-worship are common in human society. Yet despite the universal appeal of heroes, the features attributed to these figures and the attitudes toward them change depending upon the circumstances. Heroes have been the topic of extensive discussion in the academic literature. Nevertheless, little research attention has been directed at sports heroes. Examining soccer heroes is of special importance, particularly in view of soccer’s popularity across the globe and the celebrity status of top soccer stars. Purpose: The objective of this paper is to examine and map the defining features of soccer heroes as subjectively perceived by their fans. Methods: We conducted a qualitative study that entailed semi-structured interviews with 18 young Israeli soccer fans as well as content analysis of fan chants. Results: The research findings indicate that fans attribute special importance to three main characteristics that are not perceived as dominant among heroes in other contexts: loyalty to team and family, modesty and morality, and the ability to influence their surroundings. Based on the findings, the paper discusses the unique nature of soccer heroes in contrast to other elite players and the role played by these heroes for their fans.

Athletes Welfare and Reward System in Indonesia: The 30th SEA Games 2019 Athletes and Coaches Perspective

Sports heroes are considered worthy of appreciation, especially for those who contribute to providing achievements for the nation at regional and international levels. The reward is given to athletes and coaches during their productive lives in the present until their retirement period. However, the rewards received by athletes and coaches tend not to be able to fulfill their welfare as a guarantee of life in the future. Therefore, this study was aimed at determining the relationship between rewards and the level of welfare given by the government and sports committees in Indonesia to athletes and coaches. This research was an ex-post-facto study using a self-administered closed-questionnaire conducted on athletes and national coaches on the 30th SEA Games team in Philippines in 2019. The number of samples was determined by using Slovin formula at 5% error rate and carried out on 46 athletes and nine coaches under the authority of the Indonesian National Sports Committee in Bandung. Data analysis was performed by using SPSS. From the results obtained, these rewards also had a direct correlation with the level of welfare of athletes and coaches. Considering that, if a maximum reward is given, the level of welfare will also be increased. The results indicates that there is a robust and significant positive relationship between rewards and welfare. Athletes and coaches expected the government and sports committee in Indonesia to give rewards that are not only limited to bonuses in terms of financial. Other aspects also need a concern when the athletes and coaches are no longer productive in contributing to the national sports achievements.

Stacking National Identity

The matreshka designed by Sergei Maliutin and turned by Vasilii Zvezdochkin has fulfilled a precisely defined function from its inception in the late 1890s until today. Conceived as a material embodiment of national identity amid Abramtsevo’s revival of endemic Russian traditions, the stacking doll symbolized robust national fecundity. Produced and sold in the workshop Detskoe vospitanie [Children’s Upbringing] established by the Mamontov family, it promoted Russianness in a range of stacked dolls garbed in the ethnic dress of the country’s various regions. During the Soviet era the matreshka became standardized and promoted as the quintessential emblem of a vital Russia, above all to foreigners. The demise of the Soviet Union witnessed the spectacular rise of the author’s matreshka, one indelibly stamped with the creative imagination of its individual creator under new economic and cultural conditions. Political figures, American sports heroes, British rock groups, TV characters, and Hollywood stars all appeared as increasingly decorative stacked dolls. In short, the fate and the appearance of the matreshka accurately reflect Russia’s ideological biases and shifts. If early twentieth-century exploration of diverse national images yielded to a monochromatic defensiveness materialized as the unyielding, stoic child-bearer of Cold War Sovietism, then the post-Soviet matreshka conveys the chameleon-like, cosmetic veneers adopted and discarded by the consumerist society of the 1990s and subsequent decades. My article analyzes the vagaries of the matreshka’s legacy under Soviet and post-Soviet rule, during which the stacked doll has never lost its status as a unique symbol of national identity, though the terms of that symbolism have evolved.

Chicago’s Game

This chapter examines 16-inch, no-glove softball, described by one enthusiast as “Chicago's game,” and suggests that it is an “important part of the city's heritage.” Throughout the 1930s and1940s, softball provided Chicago with sports heroes and some of its most colorful sports moments before television. Following the 1933 World's Fair, softball became a professional sport in Chicago. Virtually unknown outside the city's greater metropolitan area, Chicago-style softball is played with a larger, softer ball called the “Clincher” fielded by ten position players (the tenth usually stationed behind second base) with their bare hands. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 16-inch softball in the city proper remains strongest with African Americans. This chapter traces the history of 16-inch softball in Chicago and argues that the sport was not only an expression of traditional class and gender identities and relations, but also instilled a distinct sense of community among those who played and followed it.