New Research Publications

The soccer mad boffins are very pleased to announce that we have co-authored two exciting new book chapters, one about the history of UK leisure centres and the other a methods paper about doing archival research:

Gillett, A.G. and Tennent, K.D., 2023. Evolution of Public Services: The Case of UK Leisure Centres in the Late 20th Century. In Collective Entrepreneurship in the Contemporary European Services Industries: A Long Term Approach,, Perez, PF and San Roman, E (eds)., Emerald Publishing, pp.61-76.

Tennent, K.D. and Gillett, A.G., 2023. How to research in an archive. In Handbook of Historical Methods for Management (Decker, S., Foster, W.M., Giavonnoni, E., (eds), Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.104-120.

The UK leisure centres chapter is a development of our award winning developmental paper presented at the British Academy of Management annual conference a couple of years ago. The book it is included in is the latest in the Frontiers of Management History series that we are the editors of.

The methods chapter is based on our own experience of archival research for organisational history.

FIFA Women's World Cup 2023

The FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off in just a few hours time and promises to be another exciting event.

As usual we have tried to predict the winners and also rolled dice as a 'control test' to see if either of us can predict more accurately than random chance.

Dr Alex Gillett

Champions - USA

Second  - England

Third - Brazil

Fourth - Netherlands

Dr Kevin Tennent

Champions - USA

Second  - Germany

Third - Sweden

Fourth - England

Random Dice

Champions - Spain

Second  - Colombia

Third - USA

Fourth - Australia

So, even the dice think that the USA will be there or thereabouts, the big question is; can the current European Champions England reach the final as Alex has predicted, the third place play-off as Kevin suggests, or be way off the pace such as the dice 'thinks'?

The dice do think that Australia's home advantage will help.

Will Lionel Messi’s arrival spark a football renaissance in the USA?

 Will Lionel Messi’s arrival spark a football renaissance in the USA? Bala Chambers writing for TRTWorld thinks it might in this article, for which he spoke to soccer mad boffin Dr Alex G. Gillett.

Alex references the NASL and Pele, the 1994 FIFA World Cup, as well as the more recent involvement of David Beckham with the MSL.

To read the article please click anywhere on this line of text.

For more from the soccer mad boffins about football in the USA see the following articles, click on the titles and a link should open, although the first one might not be fully open access so you may need a university library login or personal account:

Hybrid Goals (1994 FIFA World Cup)

The Growth of Major League Soccer