ABSTRACT
In many countries, football is seen as the ‘national’ sport (see chapter 1). It is sometimes difficult to perceive the position of women within definitions of ‘nation’; indeed women have been largely excluded from the main text of the book thus far. This is not owing to any bias on the part of the authors, far from it, but is a result of the fact that not only has football traditionally been regarded as a male sport in the countries in which the case studies have been carried out, but also the notion of state and the pioneering of nationalism have been largely male preserves (Dunning 1986).
