Based on long-term and detailed ethnographic research, this book uses Malta as a critical case study to explore the dynamics of contemporary football. Examining Maltese football in the context of the island's unique politics, culture and national identity, the book sheds light upon both Maltese society and on broader processes, both local and global, within the international game.

Introduction Europeanization and Football 1. Team Selection: Producing the Nation 2. New Tactics: Producing Difference 3. Football and Politics: Traditions and Modernities 4. Playing to the Big Men: Patronage and Party 5. Professions of Faith: Footballing Modernities 6. The Bigger They Come: The Price of Football 7. All the President's Men: Follow the Money 8. Getting Into Europe: Global Flows of Talent 9. Foreign Fan Clubs: The Global in the Local Epilogue

Gary Armstrong is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University, London.

Jon P. Mitchell is a Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex, Brighton.