'What football players do .. is part of the kids lives': Exploring the connections between young people and sporting celebrity

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In the summer of 2014, photographs of the Arsenal and England footballer Jack Wilshire smoking a cigarette whilst on holiday in Las Vegas made headlines across Britain. This comment from the Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho, reported in The Guardian newspaper was typical; "What football players do, millions and millions are watching, lots of kids are watching ... Everything they do ... is part of the kids' lives. If they smoke, maybe the kids think they do it a lot of times and they will probably do the same". This argument about the power of celebrities to influence the lives of young people, is a common one but has not been subject to much academic scrutiny. Sports celebrities, in particular, are held up as role models because they are dedicated athletes, high achievers and often come from the same background as those they are seen to inspire. However, there is a paradox at the heart of this relationship, which will also inform our study . On the one hand, football has become a multi-billion pound global industry, with the top players becoming national and, sometimes, global icons as a result of increased media exposure. On the other hand, these elite players form a 'community' of wealth and privilege that is increasingly disconnected from the worlds of the ordinary supporter, notably when compared with a past when players generally grew up, played for and lived in local communities. Therefore, we are also keen to examine the extent to which the dominance of the top tier within English football in terms of both finances and (mediated) visibility, may be impacting on the ability of smaller clubs to build relations with local populations, including young people. For the purposes of this project we will partner with the community organisation, Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD), which has extensive experience of working with young people and professional football clubs on community projects, primarily in the city of Sheffield. In order to take advantage of these extensive local connections, we will conduct our primary research in Sheffield and, in doing, so will engage with a range of community stakeholders. First, we are interested in exploring the views and experiences of young people in relation to sport, celebrity and community participation. To this end, we plan to use a number of collaborative, interactive workshops to involve them more fully in the data gathering process. These will involve the production of short films and other documentary materials, role playing activities and discussion groups. Second, we will build on the arguments of a recent Connected Communities scoping project (Griffiths & Armour, 2013), which argued that 'more research is needed that gives a voice to volunteer coaches', by conducting interviews in each locale with sports coaches who work with young people. This will allow us to provide an alternative perspective on the connections between young people and sporting celebrity and also assess the role of such coaches as 'community assets' involving in building or sustaining relations between these groups. Third, we will examine wider media debates, both mainstream and in social media, to examine how key campaigns and issue discussed in the workshops were reported. The project will produce a number of significant outputs including; two peer-reviewed papers for international journals, a summary report with a series of recommendations for those bodies (government agencies, sports associations, charitable organisations) involved in building communications between young people, local communities and professional sporting bodies, an end-of-project symposium designed to discuss these findings and an online platform, which will be used as a resource by all interested parties as well as forming the basis for follow-on research in this area.