ABSTRACT
People across the globe like talking, reading and writing about soccer. They love to watch their national soccer team play. They worship their footballing icons. They also invest safely in the ‘soccer industry’. However, what is meant by soccer here is ‘international soccer’ where the concerned national team is the crucial adjunct. When it comes to the game on the domestic front, the nature of mass participation depends on a variety of factors, including most importantly the nation’s status in the international soccer map. However, even when a country lacks success in international football, the domestic popularity of the game can show both slump as well as jump. It is with this assumption that the present volume has taken into consideration countries such as India, which offer cases of staggering mass popularity of both international and domestic soccer even though the countries are not even a marginal presence in world soccer. On the other hand, soccer still fails to retrieve its sagging fortune in counties such as New Zealand. But if we carefully study the enthusiasm and hype that had followed the qualification of Iran and Australia to the World Cup finals of 2006 we probably come close to a very traditionally powerful answer: ‘nothing succeeds like success’.[ 1 ]
