ABSTRACT
With the rise of postcolonial and cultural studies, the history of sports has emerged from its natal home in the West. An increasing number of quality monographs are today available on the role, impact and development of modern sports in non-western societies. Necessarily these studies have also highlighted, in a number of ways, the various networks of capital, commerce and media that position these societies vis-à-vis the dominance of the West. In the case of football studies this has often led to poignant explorations of complex circuits of capital, race and global power politics that inform international player transfers from the talented, but poverty stricken, nations of Africa and Latin America to the exploitative premiere leagues of Europe and to a limited extent Japan. Yet what remains relatively under-researched are the various flows and networks that connect the non-western world without any putative mediation of the West.
