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AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF YOUTH FOOTBALL IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES (C.1920-C.2000): THE AGE PARADIGM AND THE DEMARCATION OF THE YOUTH GAME AS A SEPARATE SECTOR OF THE SPORT KEVIN TALLEC MARSTON A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The International Centre for Sport History and Culture Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom October 2012 Table of Contents Kevin Tallec Marston Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. vii Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................. x Tables, Images, Maps, & Timelines ......................................................................................... xi Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 12 Preface ..................................................................................................................................... 12 Concerning the literature and research questions ..................................................................... 17 Thesis structure ........................................................................................................................ 30 Reflecting on sources and their limitations .............................................................................. 32 The Sources ......................................................................................................................... 32 Some Challenges ................................................................................................................. 39 Chapter 1 - The ‘Coming of Age’ in Football: the youth game as an age paradigm, c.1920-2000 ..................................................................................................................... 49 The ‘licence’ and early participation limitation according to age in France, c.1920-c.1940 ........................................................................................................................... 58 Classifying juniors and school boys by age and weight in early twentieth century America, c. 1920-c.1940 .......................................................................................................... 71 The French youth football family expands and grows younger, c.1940-c.1970 ...................... 80 Furthering the age divide and the role of ethnic clubs in the USA - from the war years into the 1970s ................................................................................................................. 88 The youthful ‘Un-American Menace’ and moving from names and numbers, from ‘cadets’ to ‘under-…’ – c.1970 to c.2000 ....................................................................... 97 Contextualising the relevance of ‘age’ in the worlds of school and work ............................. 122 Childhood from the Renaissance to the late 19th century ................................................. 124 Lengthening education through changing age limits - from the late 19th century to the present ............................................................................................................................... 127 Towards child labour protection and the international approach - from the late 19th to the present ............................................................................................................................... 132 An age of revolution and the revolution of age ...................................................................... 137 Chapter 2 - Separating Competitive Spaces – organised youth football at school and the club, c.1920-c.1980 ....................................................................................................... 143 Syntax in French youth football competitions – from “le football scolaire” to “l’école de football”, c.1920-c.1980 ...................................................................................... 148 Scolaires in the French South-West in the early 1920s .................................................... 149 ii Table of Contents Kevin Tallec Marston ‘Les petits écoliers’ – younger school competitions on both sides of the Mediterranean – from the 1930s to the 1960s .............................................................................................. 161 Football goes to school - l’école de football between the 1950s and 1980s ..................... 165 Soccer Americana: the evolution of youth football competitions in the United States c.1920-c.1980 .............................................................................................................. 175 Football at School and the lack of national policy – the first decades of the 20th Century .......................................................................................................................................... 177 Ethnics, Catholics and the Islands of ‘Soccer Americana’ all united under a National Junior Cup – 1930s to the late 1960s ............................................................................... 184 The American ‘youth soccer boom’ in the 1970s: to boldly go where no ball has gone before...something’s afoot in suburbia .............................................................................. 202 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 222 Chapter 3 - Scaling down football for a youth-sized game: “FIFA Laws of the Game shall apply, except for...”, c.1920-c.2000...................................................................... 224 Law 1: A Smaller Field of Play ............................................................................................. 227 Law 2: The Ball - Do you have that in size 3? ....................................................................... 236 Law 7: They’re not ready to play the full 90 minutes ............................................................ 244 Law 3: Thou shalt not play 11-a-side ..................................................................................... 249 Conclusion: Adapted Laws, the fruit of coaching, professionalism and commercialisation? ................................................................................................................ 256 Chapter 4 - Bridging the gap between youth and elite: from child’s play to a métier, c.1920-c.2000 ................................................................................................................ 263 Talent Identification c.1920-c.1974: Looking for little Kopas and little Fontaines ............... 267 The ‘Concours du Jeune Footballeur’, 1930 to 1979 ....................................................... 268 Curtain raisers on the American football stage, ‘levers de rideau’ and French ‘parrainage’, c.1920-c.1974 ............................................................................................. 293 Talent Formation and the internationalisation of youth football c.1974-c.2000 .................... 305 Places to learn the game: from the ‘centre de formation’ to ‘la préformation’ and the rise of the American summer soccer camp, c.1974-c.2000 ...................................................... 308 The rise of youth national teams and the internationalisation of youth football, c.1974- c.2000 ................................................................................................................................ 324 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 343 Concluding thoughts on a transatlantic bridge .............................................................. 350 The rising international, commercial and professional forces in youth football, c.1970-c.1980 ......................................................................................................................... 354 The educational stake in the 1980s youth game ..................................................................... 364 Towards international harmonisation in youth football, c.1990-c.2000 ................................ 371 iii Table of Contents Kevin Tallec Marston Appendix 1 .................................................................................................................... 388 Appendix 2 .................................................................................................................... 393 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 395 iv Abstract Kevin Tallec Marston Abstract This thesis contends that the contemporary phenomenon of youth football is the fruit of a variety of historical developments over the twentieth century. The manner in which the junior game evolved as an independent subset of the sport in France and America was certainly exemplary of the idiosyncrasies of national sporting culture, football in particular, the general timeline of each country as well as the place of ‘youth’ in wider society. The present study aims to expand the understanding of the