7 Bringing things together

Congratulations and well done for reaching this point! By now you hopefully will have been informed, challenged, and inspired to consider more carefully the relationship between sport and politics through the contextual backdrop of football and World Cup events. As you watch future World Cup events (or indeed, sport as a whole), see if you can notice more examples of how the two entities interlink with one another.

There is an understandable perception that when sport and politics collide it creates a negative impact yet, as highlighted in some of the examples explored within Session 5, it also has the ability to bring nations together or help develop the sport itself.

Sport is an immensely symbolic cultural aspect of the contemporary world and there are fewer higher-profile, global, public stages than the football World Cup. The tournament exists as part of a political economy with political implications domestically, internationally and diplomatically and, as such, will continue to be representative of both the politics involved within FIFA, and the wider political aspects of public life.