The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer offers a rare analysis of the co-mingling of economics, culture, and politics in the “global game” of football (also known as soccer) in the Middle East. James Dorsey eloquently presents these intersections in the history of Middle Eastern football and its connections to the most recent “Arab Spring” protests in the region. Dorsey's The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is a welcome discussion of a momentous era in Middle Eastern history, as it presents readers with an alternative lens to understand the dynamics of power in the region. This book successfully communicates to a wide audience, academic and non-academic alike, and will undoubtedly draw readers from football enthusiasts.
Dorsey illustrates and documents the context of football's impact on everyday life and the region's politics through rich presentations of multiple societies in the Middle East and North Africa. Most notably, readers will find detailed accounts of this historical and contemporary background for Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and Turkey. Dorsey also contextualizes the enthusiasm for football in the Middle East as part of a broader, global context for the game's influence around the world. He states that the “deep-seated passion for football is paralleled only by religion”(12). Accordingly, the author frames the game, its economic and sociocultural facets, and its venues as one area that Middle Eastern and North African leaders deemed crucial for their well-being. Dorsey illustrates this intimate involvement of the region's rulers in football by describing how football becomes another arena of power. Examples of this include: demonstrative punishments of national team players in Iraq; the micromanagement and patronage of football associations by the rulers and the members of the ruler's family in Libya and Iraq; and Hosni Mubarak's habit of awarding medallions to the Egyptian national team after international triumphs.
Dorsey is primarily concerned with the role of football within the Middle East and North Africa, but he also provides examples that illustrate the international relationships involved. Among other examples, he explains the elimination contest between Algeria and Egypt to qualify for the 2010 World Cup; the origins of the Algerian national team in the games played during the Algerian war of independence; and a rivalry between two teams in Jordan, and their supporters, which portrays tensions surrounding notions of citizenship within the kingdom and the contested nature of “Palestinian” and “Jordanian” identities.
The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer makes the case that football, and more specifically its venues, presented “a harbinger of things to come” (42). Dorsey provides detailed accounts of how football fan groups can turn into effective mobilization mechanisms during times of political unrest. He includes the Egyptian Ultras’ role in the protests under Mubarak, Morsi, and al-Sisi (Chapter 2), and the role of Çarşı fans in Turkey, especially their fan base in Istanbul, during the June 2013 anti-government protests (Chapter 3). Dorsey situates the latter example in the context of “Islamists fight over soccer.” The protests, also known as the Gezi Park protests, invoked tensions between political affiliations and definitions of conservativism and secularism in Turkish society. The author claims that the soccer fans (of rival Istanbul teams) represented key divisions in these events. Beyond the Gezi protests and an Islamists versus secularists framework, Dorsey offers an account of Turkish football as a cohesive binding of fans, politicians, businesses, and other institutions of the state (i.e. the military and the judiciary) in a detailed, well-documented analysis (114–148).
The book sometimes addresses topics in a disconnected fashion, rather than combining thematic and country-specific topics. For instance, I was curious to read about Israeli football and how it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian question, but this was not addressed until Chapter 4. In that chapter there is also a discussion of how football relates to dreams of nationhood, which involves references to the intricacies of the game and its connotations in Israel and further examples from Kurdish and Palestinian football cultures. By contrast, the role of football in Lebanon has its own chapter, presented under the title: “Sectarianism Trumps Soccer.”
The chapters in Dorsey's The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer consistently offer an uncommon perspective to the region through the lens of the global game, football. Notably in Chapter 5, “Shattering Taboos,” he explores women's soccer in the region with many examples from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Israel and exemplifies how football, and sports in general, can become “a platform for greater rights” (214) and yet is not just “controversial in conservative societies, but even in those with more liberal traditions” (219). The concluding chapter aptly reminds the readers that the Middle East and its politics is influential in “the global game,” as Qatar prepares to host the 2022 World Cup and as businesses have claimed ownerships of, or developed significant relationships with, major football clubs from around the world.
All in all, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is worth a reading. Dorsey's book appeals to a broad readership, and would make a good complement to a range of courses about the region as well.
