Football is war, but it is also history. Using football, there is a lot to tell about history, from world wars to women's emancipation. Even for those who have nothing to do with the sport. And that is what Prof. dr. Gijsbert Oonk (historian at ESHCC and specialised in sport and migration) wants to achieve with the Erasmus+ project "Football Makes History". He was interviewed about it by Elsevier Magazine.
"Teachers can therefore very well use football stories to tell traditional history," says Oonk. "Take the Cold War. Then you can also talk about the defection of players from East to West. You can do the same with topics like racism, migration, gender and women's rights."
Together with Jonathan Even-Zohar of the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam, Oonk is involved in the international platform Football Makes History, which focuses on the social and educational value of football's history and heritage. They use sport to tell stories about nationalism in the former Yugoslavia and the forgotten popularity of women's football of the past, for example.
Earlier this year, Oonk received a €400,000 grant from Erasmus+, the European Union's programme for education and sport, among other things, for a follow-up project. In cooperation with the Reinward Academy, the project works locally with, for example, secondary school ZSTiO2 in Katowice (Poland) and the museum of German professional club Eintracht Frankfurt. In Poland, this provides stories about discrimination and anti-Semitism in football from World War II and the communist era.
In Germany, the Eintracht Frankfurt Museum is a model for changing football museums, partly because of its football stories about migration and World War II. "Increasingly, they realise that they have more to offer than just trophies. They can also fulfil one social role with their heritage."
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