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World Cup tournament is one of the most popular international organizations in football. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the overall performance of World Cup 2018 teams via multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches.

The presented approach adopts entropy integrated Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) approaches to weight the criteria and evaluate the performance of World Cup 2018 teams. Initially, the authors compute weight criteria via Shannon Entropy method. Then, the authors compute and compare the results of TOPSIS and WASPAS methods so as to evaluate the performance of World Cup 2018 teams.

According to TOPSIS and WASPAS results, Belgium has demonstrated better performance in comparison to other teams. As per to the empirical results, both methods have shown a significant harmony in terms of performance figures. There is also strong positive correlation between TOPSIS and WASPAS method results. This result confirms the stability of the analysis.

This paper contributes to sport performance management literature by using MCDM methods in FIFA World Cup 2018 teams. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to measure performance of an international football organization via MCDM methods.

This chapter aims to discuss the development within Norwegian football which has led to professionalisation of women's football in the country. In considering the professionalisation of women's football in Norway, the chapter is organised as follows. First, the theoretical framework with central concepts from Bourdieu's theory and the ‘Sport/Media Complex’ are introduced. Second, the international development of women's football and milestones with relevance are introduced. Third, an empirical investigation into the professionalisation of women's football is presented. Finally, the four phases of the development of women's football in Norway are presented and discussed, with a link to broader international development, before concluding on what this means for women's football in Norway.

The purpose of this study is to develop insight into the socio‐economic determinants of African sports performance. Previous studies have argued that a country's success in sports is directly related to the economic resources that are available for those sports. However, factors that are used to determine the levels of success for developed countries are not necessarily the same, or bear the same weight, as for developing countries.

The premise of this study is to identify specific factors that increase success in sports in developing countries by means of several econometric specifications using cross sectional data for African countries.

This study finds evidence that suggests that Africa's performance in sports is dependent on a range of socio‐economic factors, which in some respects confirms worldwide studies. Money does indeed matter: GDP was the overwhelmingly consistent dependent variable in all four models tested. Interestingly, important shades of distinction between the various dependent variables are found.

There is a lack of research in the field of sports and organizational economics especially in emerging countries. Previous studies have treated countries as a homogeneous grouping and allowed the broad aggregates to reveal the determinants. This study focuses on a sub‐group of countries that are relatively poor, have had a complex past with colonial masters, and that generally have weak administrative structures.

This research proposes analytical valuation models throughout football players' life cycles based on crowd valuations from social media to produce dynamic sporting human capital disclosures, and therefore, supplying further useful information to capture the intellectual capital (IC) of football clubs.

This work is carried out using an econometric model that includes 658 observations of crowd judgments versus their transfer fees, for the best footballers of the three major European Leagues between 2006 and 2018. To make the model more parsimonious, the set of independent variables that really add value has been found across the stepwise methodology.

The significant differences between both models are analyzed, integrating previous academic literature based on the existence of negotiation elements in prices, and in the capacity of crowdsourcing to explain assessments of football players, from a dynamic perspective, alongside a new variable: injuries, which has not been explained before.

The broader assessments from crowdsourcing should be integrated in intellectual capital disclosures (ICD), from a critical, novel and dynamic perspective, creating a virtuous cycle between managers and fans, to increase transparency of financial information for stakeholders and society.

Guided by the resource-based theory, the purpose of this study was to predict the role of football talent in the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) rankings of the men’s national football teams in the Copa America zone.

The study used archival data of Copa American national football teams. The dependent variable was FIFA rankings, and the independent variables were football talent (measured by the stocks of amateur footballers, professional footballers and football officials). Statistical analysis was performed using Kendall tau statistic and binary logistic regression.

The binary logistic regression results indicated that FIFA rankings were statistically and significantly associated with the stock of football officials and professional footballers – but not amateur footballers. The predictive model explained 80 per cent of the variance.

The study focused exclusively on the stock of football talent in each nation, and not alternative determinants of national football team competitiveness as economic power and quality of professional football leagues, among others.

The stocks of professional footballers and football officials are valuable sources of competitive advantage (CA) in national football team rankings.

The study highlighted the uniqueness and distinctiveness of a nation possessing large stocks of professional footballers which can boost the CA and rankings of Copa American national football teams.

The international trade of players in European club football does not seem to have had any negative effects on the national teams in the major leagues. Data presented in this article indicate a potentially positive effect for England and no effect for Spain, Italy and Germany. Contrary to this, the national teams in Norway, Greece and France seem to have benefited from exporting players to leagues of better quality than their own domestic leagues.

This paper reflects on recent events in the global football landscape and their implications for the Middle East, especially in their ambitious aspiration to be the future destination of the sport.

By drawing on a mixture of interviews, personal observation and a documentary analysis of scholarly papers on sports marketing in general and comparable “small-time” football leagues in England, the study takes on a qualitative approach.

Even though the tiny Gulf state of Qatar has “controversially” won the hosting rights of the greatest football event in the world (i.e. FIFA 2022), the FIFA world ranking of the State puts it just within the top 100 global footballing nations (ranked no. 95 as at November 2011). Its sibling, the UAE, fares even worse. However both countries have made the most investments in the sport of football in recent years.

This paper does not place emphasis on futures studies per se, but does, in any case, suggest how the Middle East may be shaping their future in football along the six-pillars identified in the literature, which could also become a potential area for future research enquiry.

Countries with established leagues, including Australia, England and the USA recently lost the FIFA World Cup hosting rights to Russia for 2018 and “little known” (in football terms) Qatar for 2022. All these have implications for the future of football in the Middle East, and this paper investigates the sustainability of the discourse and its implication for the global sport, not the least in the Middle East.

With recent developments in global football, it is useful to understand how West Asia in particular has responded to the challenges and/or concerns of their legitimacy. This discussion is scant in the literature and this study draws attention to this trend considering the millions of dollars that have been spent by governments to improve their world ranking. Whether these investments confer on the Middle East the title of “future football destination” is a matter open to debate. This is exactly where the pioneering effort of this paper lies.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen resource-based view theory by analyzing how intellectual capital (IC) affects performance in temporary teams and by showing the moderating role of integrative mechanisms.

The research context focuses on 153 national teams of football (NTF), also referred to as national soccer teams, as an example of temporary groups. A partial least squares (PLS) methodology was utilized on a data set built from transfermarkt.com and FIFA world rankings. Three main hypotheses were developed and tested using first a PLS and then an OLS approach.

The results show how IC contributes to performance, extending the findings of previous studies to the context of temporary teams. Additionally, the results show how some integrative mechanisms such as assembly decisions and team leader experience influence temporary team performance by creating an interaction effect with existing IC.

This study contributes to IC theories for three reasons. First, it applies IC research to a specific research context: temporary teams, where specific organizational capabilities are required to coordinate resources. Second, the study analyzes the role of integrative mechanisms as moderators of the relationship between IC and performance in temporary teams. Third, the study focuses on NTF as an example of temporary teams.