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

2014年夏天，阿森纳和英格兰足球运动员杰克·威尔希尔在拉斯维加斯度假时吸烟的照片登上了英国各地的头条新闻。切尔西主帅何塞·穆里尼奥在《卫报》上报道了这一评论，这是一种典型的评论：“足球运动员的所作所为，数以百万计的人在观看，很多孩子在观看……他们所做的一切……是孩子们生活的一部分。如果他们吸烟，也许孩子们认为他们吸了很多次烟，他们很可能也会这么做。”关于名人影响年轻人生活的力量的争论是很常见的，但并没有受到太多的学术审查。尤其是体育名人，他们被视为榜样，因为他们是敬业的运动员，成就斐然，而且往往与他们所激励的人有着相同的背景。然而，这种关系的核心有一个悖论，这也将为我们的研究提供信息。一方面，足球已经成为一个数十亿英镑的全球产业，由于媒体曝光率增加，顶级球员成为国家，有时甚至是全球偶像。另一方面，这些精英球员形成了一个财富和特权的“社区”，与普通球迷的世界越来越脱节，特别是与球员通常在当地社区长大、打球和生活的过去相比。因此，我们也热衷于研究英格兰足球顶级俱乐部在财务和(中介)知名度方面的主导地位，可能会在多大程度上影响较小俱乐部与当地民众(包括年轻人)建立关系的能力。为了这个项目的目的，我们将与社区组织FURD合作，FURD在与年轻人和职业足球俱乐部合作社区项目方面拥有丰富的经验，主要是在谢菲尔德市。为了利用这些广泛的当地联系，我们将在谢菲尔德进行初步研究，并在这样做的过程中，将与社区的一系列利益相关者接触。首先，我们有兴趣探讨年轻人在体育、名人和社区参与方面的观点和经历。为此，我们计划利用一些协作、互动的讲习班，让他们更充分地参与数据收集过程。这些活动将包括制作短片和其他纪录片材料、角色扮演活动和讨论小组。其次，我们将以最近的一个互联社区范围划分项目(Griffiths&Armour，2013)的论点为基础，该项目认为，通过在每个地点对与年轻人合作的体育教练进行采访，“需要更多的研究，让志愿者教练发出声音”。这将使我们能够提供另一种视角来看待年轻人和体育名人之间的联系，并评估这些教练在建立或维持这些群体之间的关系方面所扮演的“社区资产”的角色。第三，我们将审查主流媒体和社交媒体中更广泛的媒体辩论，以审查研讨会上讨论的关键运动和问题是如何报道的。该项目将产生一些重要成果，包括：为国际期刊撰写两篇同行评议的论文，为参与建立青年、当地社区和专业体育机构之间交流的机构(政府机构、体育协会、慈善组织)提出一系列建议的总结报告，旨在讨论这些结果的项目结束专题讨论会，以及一个在线平台，所有感兴趣的各方都将利用该平台作为资源，并为这一领域的后续研究奠定基础。

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.