Abstract
This chapter addresses the question of the migration of professional players in semi-peripheral football markets—African football players in the Cambodian League in this particular case—who today comprise the majority of athletes in the current globalized football scene. Specifically, the chapter depicts African players’ strategic sojourn in the league, the emergence of informal pan-African ties and of the rise of a distinctive style of play. The analysis differs from a prevailing theoretical orientation in studies on African players in Europe in that rather than presupposing the structural disadvantage of African footballers as a given, the discussion suggests a measure of agency in how players navigate Cambodia’s football system. African footballers, moreover, have had positive effect on the nature and level of football play in Cambodia.
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Notes
- 1.
Sustained annual economic growth of seven per cent in Vietnam over the past decade has seen the average salary of local players increase from US$100–300 to US$1,000–2,000. https://www.footballchannel.jp/2016/08/20/post170110/ (accessed on 16 January 2017).
- 2.
‘Cambodia economy’, Asian Development Bank, 2016. https://www.adb.org/countries/cambodia/economy (accessed on 26 June 2017).
- 3.
Interview with local fans by the author, Phnom Penh Olympic Stadium, August and September 2015.
- 4.
In the interest of confidentiality, the names of respondents have been changed.
- 5.
http://kengadaffi.blogspot.jp/ (accessed on 10 June 2016).
- 6.
As observed during my fieldwork in Phnom Penh, during March and September 2014, and August and September 2015, respectively.
- 7.
At the time of my fieldwork, no other groupings had organized similar training sessions on a regular basis.
- 8.
However, as of 2017, the number of African players shows that they have forced other migrant players from Latin America away from the Cambodian pitch. Whether this fact results from the collective effort by migrant players to gain hegemony in the C-league requires further research. Yet, this assumption is interesting enough to merit research into the invisible game on the pitch among migrant groups with players in different teams.
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Abe, T. (2018). African Football Players in Cambodia. In: Cornelissen, S., Mine, Y. (eds) Migration and Agency in a Globalizing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60205-3_11
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