Beyond Tippekampen: the origins and maintenance of Scandinavian support for the Liverpool FC

Professional sport is a highly marketable product, whereby favourite teams often become ‘overseas sweethearts’ for millions of satellite supporters and their imagined community of like-minded fans. Scandinavia has historically proven to be a fertile market for English football and is home to some of the largest supporter groups for English clubs, in particular the Liverpool FC. This article examines the origins of Scandinavian identification with the Merseyside club and how satellite supporters in the region maintain a connection with the famous brand. Scandinavian supporters highlighted the importance of the media, especially the popularity of state-run television programmes such as Tippekampen, the team’s playing style and the presence of star players in their initial support for Liverpool FC and explained how they had turned to a virtual ‘third place’ to regularly connect and engage with fellow fans and the brand in cyberspace. In a global marketplace, satellite supporters are critical for the future of many brands and this article offers a valuable case study for those who seek to exploit these markets, monetize these consumers and build equity for their team brands.     

Gender,photography and women’s football in England: the Portsmouth Ladies FC, 1916–1918

ABSTRACT

Founded in 1916, the Portsmouth Ladies FC were one of many women’s football teams active during the First World War. Building upon the work of Jean Williams, Patrick Brennan and Ian Nannestad, this article seeks to broaden our knowledge of the development of women’s wartime football. Its principal sources are images held by National Football Museum, the Pompey History Society, along with newly digitised newspapers. This article explores two aspects of the club’s history. Firstly, it presents an overview detailing the team’s origins, playing record, the types of games they played, including games against male teams, and the role of Councillor Tom Langdon in organising and promoting their activities. Secondly, it will explore the significant photographic coverage afforded to the team, in particular by the Portsmouth Evening News photographer Joseph Stephen Cribb. It will be argued that the club’s history helps develop the chronological development of women’s football in World War On. It will also be argued that visual depictions of the team show both an increasing interest in the women’s game, and also the limits and gendered nature of that interest.     

The (Re)Constitution of football fandom: Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem and its supporters

Abstract

Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem, a fan owned club in Israel, was established in 2007 by fans of Hapoel Jerusalem, in protest against the management of the original club. The fans have adopted anti-racism, opposition to violence and inclusiveness as markers of their identity, while stressing their links with the surrounding community. The paper emphasizes the role of reflexivity and agency, as the fans built the new club to embody their aspirations. The emphasis on reflexivity is required to integrate in the analysis, both macro-social elements, and processes linked with ‘everyday life’. The paper stresses the unintended consequences of the fans’ success, in creating a football club owned by them. The performance of HKJ fandom forged, over a short time, an inclusive ‘protected space’, wherein norms of solidarity and trust were developed. Such a space attracted several thousand persons – many of them coming to football for the first time – and cultivated a sense of ‘community’ that has become of growing importance in the fans’ collective identity.     

Integration or resistance: the influx of foreign capital in British football in the transnational age

As one of the most commercialized and popular football leagues in the world, English Premiership League (Henthforce EPL) has witnessed the massive foreign capital influx since Abravomich’s significant takeover of Chelsea in 2003. British local football community traditionally has strong sense of ‘locality’ with the long history of their clubs. In the globalization context, some local fans embrace foreign capital ownership while some of them resist it. This article establishes an analytical framework to detect the causal relationship between the possible independent variables and local community reaction. Through case studies and critical discussion, this article concludes that club administration is the major determinant of local community reaction. On-pitch performance and club tradition play as second-major determinants explaining local community reaction. This article asserts while the modern neo-liberalism is prevalent in this traditional league and an overwhelming force in the context globalization. Historical local tradition, however, still takes an important role in EPL and has not been fully objected to global capital.     

Moments of social inclusion: asylum seekers,football and solidarity

Abstract

Established in 2012, ‘the Seekers’ are a football club in Melbourne, Australia. Initially set up to provide social recreation for various refugees and asylum seekers, the Seekers have more recently entered a team in the mainstream league competition. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper considers how football facilitates forms of social inclusion for team members, both in relation to the action of the sport and the political and social context of Australian society more broadly. In many ways the field of sport is highly contested as players engage with the mainstream; however the solidarity forged through playing creates the possibility for moments of social inclusion in other ways. The capacity of sporting interactions to facilitate social inclusion for male team members is vexed, though there is evidence to suggest that, in the correct conditions, sport can contribute to an individual’s capacity to access employment and educational opportunities.     

‘We’re the lassies from Lancashire’: Manchester Corinthians Ladies FC and the use of overseas tours to defy the FA ban on women’s football

ABSTRACT

The FA banned women’s football from the grounds of Association-affiliated clubs in 1921, on the grounds that the organisation perceived that football was ‘unsuitable’ for women and too much money raised for charity had been absorbed in player expenses. But women continued to play. This article analyses how Manchester Corinthians Ladies Football Club, which had been formed in 1949, was able to sustain a varied range of overseas tours and domestic matches in spite of the ban. Using a range of methods, including oral history, family history interviews, a reunion of the surviving players and player memorabilia, firstly, the article provides a history of Corinthians and Nomads from 1949 onwards. Secondly, the article uses oral history to reflect what the players felt about playing for the club and particularly its overseas tours, and charity work. Not all of the players are represented due to constraints of space, but this is an introduction to a larger ongoing project to reclaim the teams’ history. Finally, the article argues that it is important to examine the 1950s and 1960s, decades when women’s football was an unregulated activity, in order to understand that which followed once the FA ban was lifted in 1969.     

Exit,voice and loyalty: the dislocation of football fan communities

The creation of a new non-league community-led football team, borne out of opposition to the commercialization of the modern fan experience, presents a range of challenges both on and off the football pitch. FC United of Manchester emerged from the fan protests at the Glazer family takeover of Manchester United FC (MUFC) in 2005. Positioning itself in direct opposition to the corporatization of league football, it has come to prominence as a model of democratic and innovative cooperative social enterprise and, as such, a viable alternative for football fan self-organization. The sustainability of the FC United model requires long-term financial and cultural security. This article applies Hirschman’s lexicon of exit, voice and loyalty to the process of dislocation of fans from MUFC and their relocation to an area of relative deprivation in east Manchester to illuminate the challenges of creating shared community assets between an extant community and football’s arrivistes.     

The Female Vikings,a Women's Fan Group in Denmark: Formation and Development in the Context of Football and Fan Histories

Traditionally, football and fandom have been male domains and celebrations of masculinity. So far there has been some sociological and historical research on women's football; however, little is known about women's fandom, in particular about its formation and development. This article focuses on the historical development of a Danish women-only fan group called ‘The Female Vikings’, which support a professional football club, Lyngby Boldklub (BK), in a city north of Copenhagen. The article explores the backgrounds and motivations of female fans, as well as their ways of staging femininity in a man's world. Drawing on available information about football and fans in Denmark, we have reconstructed the developments of both Lyngby BK and its supporters. Special focus was placed on the histories and cultures as well as the experiences of female fans in this club. Insights into the foundation of the women's fan group were provided by problem-centred interviews which also contained open questions. The foundation and activities of the Female Vikings show how women can perform gender in the fan's stands and how they play a significant role in the fan movement. The interviews also reveal the loyalty of the female fans during the club's ‘crisis’ and their ‘collective memories’.     

The impact of the supporters’ trust movement on women’s feelings and practices of their football fandom

This article looks at the ways in which female football fans in England have responded to and become involved in the cooperative supporters’ trust movement. It examines the history and development of the movement, which offers a new, democratic and equitable way for supporters to become involved in the life of their club, and become part of a new, wider fan community, broader than simple club allegiance. The involvement of respondents in the supporters’ trust movement is explored, profiling the ways in which they have immersed or distanced themselves from the trust concept and community, and comparing their experiences as they have described them in interview. I argue that the trust movement offers the opportunity for supporters to help the game progress in a way that is advantageous to all fans, not just females; and this seems to be an element of the movement that has great appeal to women.     

Supporters and football governance,from customers to stakeholders: A literature review and agenda for research

The commercial and political development of association football (soccer) in Europe has transformed the relationship between the sport and its fans. A growing political discourse has argued that football has lost the connection with its (core and traditional) supporters; a connection that should be regained by allowing them a greater say in the governance of the game as legitimate stakeholders. This article reviews the emerging academic literature on the role of supporters. It suggests that the evidence to support a case in favour of increased supporter involvement in football governance is limited. This group of literature is theoretically and conceptually incongruent and fraught with contradictions. Academic attention thus far is broadly divided into two areas with little overlap between them: analysis of supporter engagement at the macro (government/policy) level with a top-down focus, and sociological ‘bottom-up’ case studies of supporter engagement and activism at the micro level (individual clubs/supporter groups). The study of supporters has predominantly focused on them as customers/fans and it needs to articulate a new narrative around this ‘governance turn’ to consider supporters as stakeholders, hence responding to ongoing policy developments. By doing so, it will be possible to reconcile the existing disparate bodies of work to gain a greater understanding of the new demands from the supporters and, moreover, the literature will be better placed to have an impact, hence contributing to policy-making if public authorities decide to continue their existing agenda in favour of supporter involvement in football governance.     

Marketization Impact on the Relationships Between Supporters and Football Clubs

Abstract

This article examines the concept of corporate governance, in particular the stakeholder context to analysis the relationship between football clubs in China and their local supporter groups for the purpose of gaining insight of its transitional football industry. This mainly qualitative interview-based study focuses upon the process of football marketization in China, with particular emphasis upon the research question: How has marketization impacted the relationship between supporters and football clubs? Along with an examination of the country’s wider social background, cultural influences to illustrate the impact of football marketization on the development pattern of the Chinese game and the specific characteristics of China’s fan culture under its so called socialist market economy.     

Mission Statements and Cake Stalls: The Women’s Supporter Group in Australian Football League Clubs

ABSTRACT

The Australian Football League (AFL) has made extensive efforts in the past decade to ensure that Australian Rules football is seen as an inclusive culture that respects, acknowledges, and desires the presence of female supporters in its membership base. Given that women have constituted a significant proportion of the football audience since the inception of the game in the mid-1800s, this show of support for women would appear to be belated and leads one to question what other motivations lie behind it. This article questions whether these recent attempts to acknowledge women as an important constituent group in AFL football culture, through the formation and/or maintenance of dedicated female supporter groups and networks in AFL football clubs, are genuinely aimed at making AFL club culture more inclusive of women.     

Exploring athletic identity in elite-level English youth football: a cross-sectional approach

Abstract

This study is the first empirical investigation that has explored levels of athletic identity in elite-level English professional football. The importance of understanding athletes’ psychological well-being within professional sport has been well documented. This is especially important within the professional football industry, given the high attrition rate (Anderson, G., & Miller, R. M. (2011). The academy system in English professional football: Business value or following the herd? University of Liverpool, Management School Research Paper Series. Retrieved from http://www.liv.ac.uk/managementschool/research/working%20papers/wp201143.pdf) and distinct occupational practices (Roderick, M. (2006). The work of professional football. A labour of love? London: Routledge). A total of 168 elite youth footballers from the English professional football leagues completed the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS). Multilevel modelling was used to examine the effect of playing level, living arrangements and year of apprentice on the total AIMS score and its subscales (i.e., social identity, exclusivity and negative affectivity). Football club explained 30% of the variance in exclusivity among players (P = .022). Mean social identity was significantly higher for those players in the first year of their apprenticeship compared to the second year (P = .025). All other effects were not statistically significant (P > .05). The novel and unique findings have practical implications in the design and implementation of career support strategies with respect to social identity. This may facilitate the maintenance of motivation over a 2-year apprenticeship and positively impact on performance levels within the professional football environment.     

Ultras in Indonesia: conflict,diversification, activism

Abstract

Ultras play a vital role in the life of Indonesian football. Ultra fandom has emerged as a highly visual, highly spectacular, and frequently violent form of fandom in post-reformasi Indonesia. Ultra fan groups are overwhelmingly made up of young, urban men who dedicate much of the leisure time to supporting their club – whether through being at the stadium, creating on tifos, or through social-media campaigns. Supporter groups such as PSIM’s Brajamusti are linked to the cultural and political realities of everyday life in Yogyakarta. While the Surabaya-based Bonek are engaged in an ongoing struggle against FIFA and Indonesia’s football federation. The Solo-based Pasoepati are a more recent fan group who have supported several Solo-based teams. This article draws on field work carried out between August and December 2014. The article explores how the different fan groups interact with each other with their city and how they imagine an improved ‘soccer-scape’ in Indonesia.     

Social agency and football fandom: the cultural pedagogies of the Western Sydney ultras

Abstract

This article addresses key questions of social agency and cultural pedagogy within the neoliberal structures of ‘modern football’ in the Australian context. It reports on a two-year ethnographic study of the Red and Black Bloc, an Australian ultras group in Western Sydney, one of the most culturally diverse areas in Australia. The origins of the Western Sydney ultras are described, along with their struggles to build their own cultural identity and to fight for social agency within a commodified football league. By combining a multifaceted theoretical model with a range of ethnographic data – including document analysis and in-depth interviews – this study reveals the processes by which the Western Sydney ultras enhance members’ social cohesion towards an increased social consciousness. The paper acknowledges the role that ultras, as authentic cultural formations, may have in the propagation of new cultural pedagogies that have the potential to enhance citizenship, communal life and participatory democracy.     

The role of specialisation in the promotion of young football talents: A person-oriented study

Abstract

This paper investigates the controversial question whether it is more effective to promote specialisation in a specific sport at the beginning of a career or whether to encourage a broad range of sports when promoting competitive sports talents in order for them to achieve a high level of performance in adulthood. The issue of promoting talents depends on human developmental processes and therefore raises developmental scientific questions. Based on recent, dynamic-interactionist concepts of development, we assume a person-oriented approach focussing on the person as a whole rather than individual features. Theoretical considerations lead to four interacting factors being summarised to form a subsystem: childhood training. The relative weights of these factors lead to patterns. By relating these to a performance criterion at the age of peak performance, particularly promising developmental patterns may be identified. One hundred fifty-nine former Swiss football talents were retrospectively interviewed about their career and the data analysed using the LICUR method. Two early career patterns were identified as having a favourable influence on adult performance. Both are characterised by an above-average amount of in-club training. One pattern also exhibits an above-average amount of informal football played outside the club, the other above-average scores for activity in other sports. Hence, comprehensive training and practice inside and outside the club form the basis for subsequent football expertise.     

The polygenic profile of Russian football players

Abstract

Research concerned with predictors of talent in football has highlighted a number of potentially important and partially inherited measures such as body size, anaerobic power, aerobic capacity, agility, psychological profile, game intelligence and susceptibility to injuries. Genotyping for performance-associated DNA polymorphisms at an early age could be useful in predicting later success in football. The aim of the study was to investigate individually and in combination the association of common gene polymorphisms with football player’s status. A total of 246 Russian football players and 872 controls were genotyped for 8 gene polymorphisms, which were previously reported to be associated with athlete status. Four alleles (ACE D, ACTN3 Arg577, PPARA rs4253778 C and UCP2 55Val) were first identified, showing discrete associations with football player’s status. Next, we determined the total genotype score (TGS, from the accumulated combination of the 4 polymorphisms, with a maximum value of 100 for the theoretically optimal polygenic score) in athletes and controls. The mean TGS was significantly higher in football players (52.0 (17.6) vs. 41.3 (15.5); P < 0.0001) than in controls. These data suggest that the likelihood of becoming a football player depends on the carriage of a high number of “favourable” gene variants.     

How does the modern football goalkeeper train? – An exploration of expert goalkeeper coaches’ skill training approaches

ABSTRACT

The football goalkeeper position arguably represents a unique role within the team sport. Despite its highly complex skill demands, research on football goalkeeping has only sporadically examined the position within isolated and limited parameters. In particular, there is limited literature on “modern” skill acquisition training methods and approaches within the field of goalkeeper training. In a cross-cultural study with fifteen expert goalkeeper coaches, researchers here examined the overarching research question of “how does the modern football goalkeeper train?”. Semi-structured interviews explored expert coaches’ views on critical skills for performance in goalkeeping and the training approaches used to develop these critical skills. Results indicate that four skill sets are considered essential by goalkeeper coaches, these are: decision-making skills, athleticism, mentality, and technical skills. In terms of developing these skills in goalkeeper-specific training, the majority of expert coaches apply a similar microstructure to training sessions. This structure involves a steady progression from simple to complex training tasks, where for large parts, isolated technical training appears to be prioritised over a holistic training approach that integrates technical skills and perceptual-cognitive components (e.g., decision making). Scientific and practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners in the field of football goalkeeper coaching are provided.     

A qualitative inquiry into supporter representation on Scottish football club boards

Recent political initiatives in the UK have sought to increase the role of supporters in the governance of football clubs. The Labour Party included in their 2015 general election manifesto proposals to give supporters a statutory right to representation on the board of directors of their club. In Scotland, amendments to the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act (2015) have provided Scottish Ministers with a framework to develop legislation relating to supporter involvement in governance. To date, however, there has been limited research on supporter representation, and the practicability of legislation giving fans the right to a seat in the boardroom has not been investigated. The purpose of this paper is to address that gap in the literature. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 directors of Scottish football clubs. Findings show that such legislation would be imprudent given the inherent difficulty of the role and the potential disruption to board dynamics.     

The art of face-saving and culture-changing: sculpting Chinese football’s past,present and future

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the football statues of China, whose football team has dramatically underperformed relative to its population size and economic power. Although China lacks a participative grassroots football culture and has struggled to establish a credible domestic league, recent government intervention and investment has seen football’s profile rise dramatically. China’s many football statues are largely atypical in comparison to the rest of the world, including their depiction of anonymous figures rather than national or local heroes, the incorporation of tackling scenes in their designs, and their location at training camps. Through four specific examples and reference to a global database, we illustrate how these statues reflect the tensions and difficulties inherent in China’s desire to integrate itself into global football, and achieve its stated goal of hosting and winning the FIFA World Cup, whilst simultaneously upholding national, cultural and political values such as the primacy of hard work and learning, and saving face in defeat.