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Sport is an important economic activity, and understanding the role of teams and managers is necessary, yet managers – specifically their brand personas – have been the subject of limited research. The purpose of this research is to explore the brand persona of a football manager, using Arsène Wenger as a case.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study, qualitative methods were used to explore the brand-building activity. Media reports and images that centred on Arsène Wenger's words covering a three-year period were analysed. In total, 1364 articles and 23 images were analysed in NVivo, using both a priori and emergent codes.

The findings show the construction of the brand persona in three main dimensions pertinent to his role as a manager. The first is the performance in the managerial role in which Arsène Wenger is appointed, the second is associated with the person (including emotions and self-expression) and the third is the context (i.e. football) in which the manager operates.

The research focused on one manager while he was managing a premier league club and is limited to England.

While proposing a theoretical model, this study proposes football clubs understand a manager's persona in relation to the club's brand and the interactive effect. The support of the club on the persona is also indicated.

Football managers have received some research attention, but there has been no analysis of their brand personas. This study expands the understanding of the contribution of the manager to the club brand.

The purpose of this paper is to show how one of the biggest phenomena of the twenty‐first century is the internationalisation of professional sports and how premier league football epitomises this. With the influx of foreign players, managers and now owners, European League Football has become big business. This paper aims to provide a theoretical analysis of the management implications of foreign players in the English Premiership League football – renamed the Barclays Premier League to suit the needs of its major sponsors.

The approach adopted is purely qualitative in nature, evaluating the top Barclays Premier League teams and the impact of globalisation on their reconfigurations since the early 1990s to date. The study draws mainly from a review of the extant literature on sports and management, as well as a critical analysis of media reports.

Globalisation has emerged as a new force that has changed the way corporations are managed. Financial services, retail and information technology firms have all responded to this new wave – and so also has sports. Unfortunately while sports have the potential to teach lessons on management strategy, management researchers seem to have relegated sports to the sociology and psychology disciplines.

The Barclays Premier league football provides a unique environment for management decisions and processes to occur in a range of markets and at varied levels. However, the globalisation of professional sports has received relatively very little attention in the academic literature – especially in the field of business and management.

This paper contributes to the scant literature on the management implications of football by highlighting how globalisation has affected and reconfigured professional sports using the influx of foreign players into the English football league as a point of departure.

Football, or soccer as it is known in the United States, is one area in which managerial positions are hugely volatile with what is often called a ‘merry-go-round’ of managers sacked for poor performance at their club and reemployed by another club. Not only does this practice often not increase performance but it is also very costly. Considering the nature of football, that is, the relatively high impact of chance on the rare events that goals are, and the high correlation between success and the wage bill, the influence of managers on performance is often over-estimated. However, potentially better preparation of future managers might help to increase competitive advantages. In this chapter, we are looking in depth at leadership in the context of football and the lessons we can draw for other contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of managerial change in the English football industry. The authors’ theoretical discussion covers three contrasting concepts that attempt to explain the association between manager change and organizational performance (scapegoating theory, vicious circle theory and tenure and life-cycle theory).

Data were collected for the four main English Football Leagues (EFLs) between 2000/2001 and 2015/2016. A total of 2,816 football matches were included in the study and during this time 525 instances of managerial change were observed. Analysis was conducted using relevant statistical techniques to examine the impact of managerial change on performance.

The results show significant differences in all four EFLs when considering teams who make a managerial change and those who do not. Further analysis revealed that a managerial change is more beneficial for clubs in the bottom half of the league, particularly for the English Premier League.

The implications for clubs competing in English football are clear when considering the strategic direction of the club in respect of managerial change and its impact on team performance. Yet, our findings come with a warning. The findings do not infer direct cause and effect here, and any board decision should consider additional factors other than sporting performance before deciding to sack their manager.

The purpose of this paper is to provide better understanding of potential foreign customers or satellite fans' perceptions of professional‐football brands, as this constitutes a necessary step toward setting up an internationalisation strategy to create a global professional‐sport brand.

Twelve semi‐directed individual interviews with French satellite fans about how they perceive the English Big Four brands of Arsenal Football Club (FC), Chelsea FC, Liverpool FC and Manchester United are conducted.

The paper found the common and specific features of each club's brand equity and the typical fans' perceptions of the clubs, which constitute major dimensions upon which the clubs are differentiated in the customers' minds. It also identified such key antecedents to building strong professional‐sport brand equity in the French market as the fit between the image, the values or both of the foreign club and the local club a fan supports.

The main limitation is the size of the sample, even if the saturation‐semantic criterion is applied.

This paper emphasises the need for professional‐sport clubs not to underestimate the need for strategic‐marketing steps different from those used at home before implementing foreign marketing operations and constitutes a first step toward future research into the analysis of the perceptions of potential foreign customers or satellite fans in broader contexts.

Although many studies have dealt with the perception of local professional‐sport brands, this paper represents one of the first empirical studies of the perceptions of professional‐football brands in a foreign market.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and encourage consideration of the ethical and in some instances legal implications of managerial change in the English Premier League (EPL) which often gets overlooked and sidestepped by clubs.

Extant literature relating to managerial change is identified and discussed to provide the foundations of the discussion of whether managerial change in the EPL which is primarily focused on performance outcome, is neglecting ethical and legal issues.

The loophole that exists in the Employment Rights Act (1996) allows clubs to instantly dismiss a manager and consequently not see out their notice period as agreed in their contract or the statutory notice period. Whilst legally clubs are at will to act in this manner, the instability of EPL management evident today appears to have taken away the rights of an employee.

Greater consideration of the current managerial change practices in EPL from an ethical and legal perspective appears warranted. The incomparable rights that a player and a manger have relating to their tenure at a club seem somewhat unfair.

Presents thought-provoking information relating to managerial change in the EPL which appears to have been overlooked in the literature to date which primarily focuses on the impact of change on performance.

The purpose of this paper is to report a critical analysis of the plan recently launched by the Chinese Government for the development of the football industry in China. The analysis encompasses the impact exerted by the new policy instrument on the Eurocentric trend that configured the power relations in the football realm, as well as the challenges raised by barriers deeply rooted in culture that Chinese authorities should face in order to foster pervasive change and thus create the conditions for success.

The analysis of the policy document has been carried out under the light of the theory of innovation, namely, the contributions of Peter Drucker, who looks at innovation as a means to foster change in the social and economic environment, inducing new patterns of behaviour and creating new habits. This theoretical framework provides ground to the analytical endeavour because the Chinese plan for football development presents the overall goal of shifting the habits of sporting practice and consumption.

The first and most visible “innovative” effect of the policy took the form of a shock provoking an unprecedented change in the geopolitics of football and the inherent disturbance in the traditional Eurocentric structure of football power relations. At the domestic level, the Chinese Government is assuming the “educating” role in order to change behaviour and habits, that is, to ensure the transformative power necessary to overcome barriers deeply rooted in culture. Accordingly, rather than the availability of financial resources, the capacity to materialise this pervasive switch in behaviour and habits in terms of football practice and consumption is the major challenge, the one of a social innovation endeavour.

The research reported in this paper provides an original and innovative approach to the analysis of a sports relevant public policy document, namely, because of the theoretical framework wrapping up the analytical endeavour.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

A huge and complex responsibility faces those individuals who become leaders of global organizations. Not surprising then that there are concerns about a lack of talent coming through the ranks to manage companies which are becoming increasingly global in nature.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.