ABSTRACT
Introduction In a re ection of the uses of social network analysis, Crossley (2011) noted that perhaps the most appropriate analytic tool for the scienti c study of social life, which includes football, is the network of social relations and interactions between actors, both human and corporate. While students of association football and sport in general, are increasingly adopting network concepts and perspectives in their work (Millward, 2006, 2011), the application of social network analysis as a theory and methodology, at least that intended by Crossley, has been rather limited. Yet, the social world of football in essence is fundamentally patterned and structured by visible and non-visible networks. Some are enduring and institutionalised. Others are transient and informal. Some are big, others small, commercial, virtual and global, and so on. The social network concept can capture and facilitate analysis of this variation. As Crossley et al. (2014) note, it is not a prescriptive concept, but a sensitising one, which invites openminded empirical enquiry and comparison. For example, historians of football would be interested in how networks of like-minded individuals and through collective action in the mid to late 1800s, established clubs, which through time and repeated interaction, would become social institutions. Sociologists of football might be interested in collective action and the division of labour involved in all aspects of the sport. They may also be interested in football as an indicator of social capital and taste formation (cultural capital). Football criminologists might be attracted to covert networks of hooliganism. Scholars of football business might be concerned with the international football trade networks, or networks of sponsorship at mega events, while geographers of football might be interested in the network of global migration of players. Networks are inseparable from the social and corporate world of football and constantly in ux.
