Research on Sports and Cross-cultural Communication ——A Historical Inspection Centering on British Coaches

Most historians agree that British coaches have exerted great influence on the transmission of football to the European continent. However, nearly no one has ever studied what means and mechanisms were followed as the concept, knowledge and technologies about football were transmitted to the European continent. This present paper collected numerous literatures on coach migration and cross-cultural communication and studied the migration model and network of foreign coaches in Britain as well as how they apply their experiences to other countries. All of these prove that cross-cultural communication on football concept, knowledge and technologies is never as simple as we believe, the guiding principles as well as methodologies need to adapt to the changes of local environments. In contrast to engineers in the 19th century, football coaches in Britain have, through information and knowledge exchanges on football and arrangement of football players, become typical characteristic of the emerging transnational sports network.