This chapter investigates how recent developments in European higher education resemble the current state of the most popular sport on earth: football. It begins by showing how both football and higher education, as organisational fields, have emerged as deeply embedded entities within national and/or local contexts, with only weak links to the transnational environment. It continues, however, by further showing that with global marketisation processes gradually coming to the fore, both fields have become subject to convergence pressures, including de-contextualisation as a result of the rise of global markets.