Discourses On Mass Versus Elite Sport and Pre-Adult Football in Norway

This article focuses on the discursive framework of pre-adult football in Norway. The analytical starting point features debates in two major Norwegian newspapers, started by the head of the elite division of the Norwegian national sport organization. His main concern is to discuss the conditions for elite sport — focusing on legitimation and talent development. This discussion serves as a focus for the investigation of the social anchoring of organized sport. It is argued that the state's interest in the population's health, the way sport is organized, and dominant values related to children, together form the discourse of pre-adult sport. The main characteristics of this discourse are that the values of mass sport dominate, the issue of mass versus elite sport is relatively mute, and that clear discursive positions are hard to detect.