Globalization

Franklin Foer’s book How Soccer Explains the World, offered a different perspective on how globalization works. Overall, I found the novel very intriguing. Specifically, chapter six “How Soccer Explains the Black Carpathians.” Chapter six discusses how the Ukrainian Premier League recruits Nigerian soccer players to play for their teams. It directly relates to globalization in terms of outsourcing and loss of cultural diversity.

            Outsourcing in corporations isn’t something rare. Many corporations, like Dell and Nike, partake in outsourcing because it reduces cost of production of a good. It also allows goods to be reasonably priced for consumers. One negative of outsourcing certain aspects of your company oversea is the big difference between cultures. In Foer’s novel, it was said that Nigerians were recruited because it was a good investment for the Ukrainian soccer team. That then is outsourcing in soccer. The cultural differences between the Ukrainians and the Nigerian players caused high tensions. Ukrainians believed that with the amount of money spent on the outsourced recruitments could have been used to recruit Ukrainians. Playing in another country was a big culture change for the Nigerian player Edward Anyamkyegh. He said, “It’s hard for African players to adapt, especially when you have training sessions at minus 25.” When outsourcing, one has to consider and understand the culture of the outsourcing country. That would dictate their work practice, ethics, etc. In Ukraine they often practice in below zero temperatures so it was something Edward had to adapt to so he could play. 

A critique of globalization is that cultures may lose cultural diversity. In Foer it was said, “It broke down into factions. You would walk into the team dining room and find the various nationalities eating at their own separate tables. They would sit apart on the team bus and at practice.” The Ukrainian interacted with the Yugoslavs because their cultures and language were similar. They often ignored the Nigerians so tensions and racism were high at the time. Ukrainian players weren’t open to the idea of having player from other countries. Foer said that they thought it was a humiliation to have to have Nigerian players imported to have a great soccer team again. The players also believed that all the money used to recruit players like Edward could have been used to train a young Ukrainian for the team. The Ukrainian team didn’t want much change for their team. In globalization, with the interconnectedness of different nations, countries lose cultural identity and often become less culturally diverse since one country usually has more power.

Globalization has its positives and negative. It also depends of the perspective it is looked at. Globalization allows countries to communicate faster with each other and trade is made easier but there are often people who don’t gain as much. Countries are prone to lose certain aspects of their cultures and there’s often “losers” in globalization. In Foer, the losers would be those who could have had the opportunity at the soccer position but it instead was outsourced to another country. Foer’s connections of soccer to globalization put a different type of perspective of globalization. Overall, globalization is something that can be very helpful to the international world.