The Neoliberal Game: An critical analysis of children's non competitive grassroots football

Abstract

This thesis explores the propensity for harms throughout children’s non-competitive football. Adopting ethnographic approaches this project follows a team of under 9’s non-competitive team in a SW FA league, it analyses their private social media page and conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with life-long players, parents, coaches and referees. It advances a critical criminology of sport by presenting an alternative framework to Elias and the Civilising process by using contemporary critical criminology, namely ultra-realism and deviant leisure. By using ultra-realism and deviant leisure this study examines the underlying systemic harm which comes from the neoliberal environment of sport, including children’s non-competitive football.