Jean-Michel De Waele is Professor of Political Science at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. His areas of expertise include Central and Eastern European politics, social-democracy, as well as the relations between sport and politics.

Suzan Gibril is F.R.S-F.N.R.S Fellow at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Her fields of expertise include contentious politics in the Middle East and the relations between sport and politics in the region.

PART 1 - Introduction; Ramon Spaaij, Jean-Michel De Waele, Suzan Gibril, and Ekaterina Gloriozova.- PART 2 - Western Europe.- Belgium; Jean-Michel De Waele and Gregory Sterck.- France; David Ranc, and Nicolas Hourcade.- Germany; Albrecht Sonntag.- Greece and Cyprus; Christos Kassimeris.- Italy; Fabien Archambault.- Spain; Carles Viñas.- Sweden; Aage Radmann and Torbjörn Andersson.- Switzerland; Thomas Busset and Christian Koller.- United Kingdom; Matthew Taylor.- PART 3 - Eastern Europe.- Croatia; Loïc Tregoures.- Poland; Wojciech Wozniak.- Romania; Florin Faje.- Russia; Ekaterina Gloriozova.- Serbia; Richard Mills.- Ukraine; Olga Ruzhelnyk.- PART 4 - Africa & Middle East.- Algeria; Mahfoud Amara and Youcef Bouandel.- Egypt; Suzan Gibril.- Israel; Yair Galily and Tal Samuel-Azran.- Ivory Coast; Daniel Künzler.- Nigeria; Chuka Onwumechili, Totty O. Totty, and Leelanee Malin.- South Africa; Gustav Venter.- Zimbabwe; Manase Kudzai Chiweshe.- PART 5 - Americas.- Argentina; Pablo Alabarces, José Garriga Zucal, Verónica Moreira, Gabriela Garton and Nemesia Hijós.- Brazil; Rosana da Câmara Texeira and Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda.- Mexico; Sergio Varela.- United States; Charles Parrish, and Jamee Pelcher.- Uruguay; Lincoln Bizzozero Revelez.- PART 6 - Asia and Oceania.- Australia; Roy Hay and Ian Syson.- India; Kausik Bandyopadhyay.- Indonesia; Andy Fuller.- Japan; John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter.- Turkey; Daghan Irak and Jean-François Polo.

This Handbook offers an analysis of the relation between football and politics, based on over 30 case studies covering five continents. It provides a detailed picture of this relation in a wide number of European, American, African, and Asian states, as well as a comparative assessment of football in a global perspective, thus combining the general and the local. It examines themes such as the political origins of football in the studied country, the historical club rivalries, the political aspects of football as a sports spectacle, and the contemporary issues linked to the political use of football. By following the same structure with each study, the volume allows for the comparison between largely investigated cases and cases that have seldom been addressed. The Handbook will be of use particularly to students and scholars in the fields of sport studies, political science and sociology, as well as cultural studies, anthropology and leisure studies.