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FOOTBALL RESEARCH IN AN ENLARGED EUROPE
SERIES EDITORS:
ALBRECHT SONNTAG · DAVID RANC

Football Fandom
in Europe
and Latin America
Culture, Politics, and Violence
in the 21st Century
Edited by
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda · Thomas Busset
Football Research in an Enlarged Europe

Series Editors
Albrecht Sonntag
ESSCA School of Management
EU-Asia Institute
Angers, France

Dàvid Ranc
ESSCA School of Management
EU-Asia Institute
Angers, France
This series publishes monographs and edited collections in collaboration
with a major EU-funded FP7 research project ‘FREE’: Football Research
in an Enlarged Europe. The series aims to establish Football Studies as a
worthwhile, intellectual and pedagogical activity of academic significance
and will act as a home for the burgeoning area of contemporary Football
scholarship. The themes covered by the series in relation to football
include, European identity, memory, women, governance, history, the
media, sports mega-events, business and management, culture, spectator-
ship and space and place. The series is highly interdisciplinary and trans-
national and the first of its kind to map state-of-the-art academic research
on one of the world’s largest, most supported and most debated socio-­
cultural phenomenona.

Editorial Board
Richard Giulianotti (Loughborough University, UK)
Kay Schiller (Durham University, UK)
Geoff Pearson (Liverpool University, UK)
Jürgen Mittag (German Sport University Cologne, Germany)
Stacey Pope (Durham University, UK)
Peter Millward (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
Geoff Hare (Newcastle University, UK)
Arne Niemann (Johannes-Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany)
David Goldblatt (Sports writer and broadcaster, UK)
Patrick Mignon (National Institute for Sports and Physical
Education, France)
 Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda
Thomas Busset
Editors

Football Fandom in
Europe and Latin
America
Culture, Politics, and Violence
in the 21st Century
Editors
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda Thomas Busset
Centre for Research and Documentation on Centre International d’Etude du Sport
Brazilian Contemporary History Neuchâtel, Neuchatel, Switzerland
Getulio Vargas Foundation
Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Football Research in an Enlarged Europe

ISBN 978-3-031-06472-2    ISBN 978-3-031-06473-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06473-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

The present book is the fruit of a meeting between two researchers, one
working in Brazil, the other in Switzerland. Both had worked on extreme
fandom in their respective countries and in the context of comparative
steps taken on the international scale. We came to the inescapable realiza-
tion that our interests concerned the same set of problems and that our
objectives were similar in many regards, and that each one’s knowledge of
the other’s area of observation and research was weak and fragmentary,
this inadequacy being particularly great as regards the European’s view of
Latin America. From this conclusion sprang the idea of creating a joint
work combining contributions from both our continents.
The project was immediately met with a positive echo, but the process
of finding authors and convincing a publisher turned out to be long. And
the pandemic began to rage while most of the articles were complete or
on the way to being so. Due in particular to the disruptions suffered by
the academic world, the works were thus considerably hampered and
delayed. The more time passed, the more the additional question was
raised of knowing whether the supporters could one day find their way
back to the stands, and if so, under what conditions. In the autumn of
2021, the entrances to the stadiums at first became ajar, then their doors
opened slightly, before some of them began to open up completely.
The normal rhythm is not (yet) re-established, far from it, but the
observations made tend to show that the supporters are present and that
v
vi Preface

they appear under different forms. The calls for a boycott launched here
and there in protest against the restrictions linked to the struggle against
the spread of infections provide a conspicuous proof that passions have
not been extinguished. The future, and studies which will not fail to pro-
liferate, will tell whether the lull in activity imposed by the health mea-
sures has transformed the supporters’ world. If so, that assessment will be
made in the light of the practices described and analysed in this book. We
hope you find it a good read.

Sao Paulo, Brazil Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda

Neuchâtel, Switzerland  Thomas Busset
 Contents

1 Football
 Fans in Europe and Latin America  1
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda and Thomas Busset

Part I Europe  35

2 A
 Sociological Analysis of United Kingdom Football Fans:
Historical Debates and Contemporary Issues 37
Jamie Cleland and Richard Giulianotti

3 Football
 Fandom in France and Italy 59
Sébastien Louis

4 A
 Struggle Between Loyalty and Commodification:
Scandinavian Football Fans 81
Aage Radmann, Torbjörn Andersson, and Katarzyna Herd

5 From
 Stands to Forests: The Development of Belgian and
Dutch Football Hooliganism107
Bertrand Fincoeur

vii
viii Contents

6 Fandom,
 Society, and Politics in Germany, Austria, and
Switzerland127
Christian Koller

7 The
 Long Shadow of Communism, Hooliganism and
Identity Politics: Contemporary Football Fandom in
Eastern Europe149
Radosław Kossakowski

8 Football
 Fandom in South-Eastern Europe: The Countries
from the Former Yugoslavia173
Loïc Tregoures

9 Claques,
 Ultras and Radicals: The Uneven Development
of Fandom in Spain and Portugal—A History of
Identities and Political Extremism193
Carles Viñas

Part II Latin America 213

10 A
 Duel of “Hinchadas”: Chile and Argentina, a
Comparative Study215
Verónica Moreira, Rodrigo Soto Lagos, and Carlos Vergara

11 The
 Field of Interactions of Organized Supporters’
Groups in Brazil237
Felipe Tavares Paes Lopes and Rosana da Câmara Teixeira

12 War
 and Football in the Andes: Organised Groups of
Supporters in Peru and Colombia259
Aldo Panfichi and Raúl Eduardo Martínez

13 Central
 America’s Football Fan Groups285
Onésimo Rodríguez Aguilar
 Contents ix

14 Isolation,
 Youthful Rebelliousness and Criminalization:
Football Supporters’ Groups in Mexico307
Roger Magazine

15 Ultras,
 Hooligans, Torcidas and Barras: An Overview
Across Two Continents329
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda

I ndex367
 Notes on Contributors

Onésimo Rodríguez Aguilar is a professor and researcher in the

Anthropology Department and Center for Anthropological Research
(CIAN) at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), and of the Institute of
Population Social Studies (IDESPO) at the National University of Costa
Rica (UNA). Aguilar has obtained PhD in Anthropology from the
Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico (UAM).
Torbjörn Andersson is an associate professor at the Department of
Sports Sciences at Malmö Universitet. He has authored four books on the
cultural history of Swedish football and one book on the cultural history
of the sport of bandy. Currently, he is working on a book project on the
cultural heritage of Swedish football. He is the member of the Editorial
Board of the journal Soccer & Society.
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda obtained PhD in the Social History of
Culture from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-­
Rio). He is currently an associate professor at the School of Social Sciences
and a researcher at the Centre for Research and Documentation on
Brazilian Contemporary History at the Getulio Vargas Foundation
(FGV/CPDOC).

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

Thomas Busset is historian and scientific collaborator at the International

Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
He oversees research on the links between hooliganism and right-wing
extremism in Switzerland. He is author of many articles and books
including the books Aux frontières du football et du politique (2016) and
L’autre visage du supportérisme (2014).
Jamie Cleland is Senior Lecturer in Sport and Management at the
University of South Australia. He has published 7 books with Routledge
and Palgrave Macmillan and over 50 articles and chapters and writes
widely on a range of social issues in sport and society.
Rosana da Câmara Teixeira obtained PhD in Anthropology. She is an
associate professor and researcher at the Institute of Education of the
Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). She is member of the Laboratory
of Education and Cultural Heritage. She has developed postdoctoral
studies in Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional (UFRJ—Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil).
Bertrand Fincoeur is Senior Lecturer in Sport Sociology and Sport
Management at the Institute of Sports Sciences of the University of
Lausanne. Bertrand is also a senior lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology in Lausanne. He holds a PhD in Criminology from KU
Leuven. His research areas primarily cover controversial issues and integ-
rity in sports.
Richard Giulianotti is Professor of Sociology at Loughborough
University, UK, and a Professor II at the University of South-Eastern
Norway. He has published many books and articles in the fields of sport
(particularly football), spectator cultures, globalization, mega-events,
crime and deviance, and social development.
Katarzyna Herd Herd is currently an SLS postdoc researcher in the
Ethnology Department at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She did her
PhD in Ethnology (about history in four Swedish football clubs) at Lund
University, Sweden,. Her research projects include Swedish-speaking
football clubs in Finland, football transfer patterns in Sweden, and con-
flict and leadership at workplaces.
 Notes on Contributors xiii

Christian Koller is Director of the Swiss Social Archives (Zurich) and

Adjunct Professor of Modern History at the University of Zurich and the
Swiss Distance University Institute. Koller is co-leader of the project
“Swiss Sports History” and author and editor of seven books on Swiss
and international sport history.
Radosław Kossakowski is Associate Professor in Sociology, Director of
Institute of Sociology at Gdańsk University, Chair of the Scientific
Council of Sociology at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. He is the
author of the following books: Female Fans, Gender Relations and Football
Fandom: Challenging the Brotherhood Culture (2020); Politics, Ideology
and Football Fandom: The Transformation of Modern Poland (2020).
Rodrigo Soto Lagos is Doctor of Psychology at Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Valparaíso. Lagos is coordinator of the Working Group
“Sports, Culture and Society”, Latin American Council of Social Sciences
(CLACSO), and Chilean Social Studies Network for Sports and researcher
at Andrés Bello University. Lagos is responsible for FONDECYT n °
11191188.
Felipe Lopes is PhD in Social Psychology (University of São Paulo).
Lopes developed postdoctoral research in Sociology of Sport (Campinas
State University) and Contemporary History (Getúlio Vargas
Foundation). Lopes is a professor at the Postgraduate Program in
Communication and Culture at the University of Sorocaba, Brazil.
Sébastien Louis obtained PhD in History (University of Perpignan).
He is the author of Ultras: The Other Protagonists of Football and other
publications on ultras in Italy. He is an associate researcher at the CRIX
of the University of Paris Nanterre. His research is mainly focused on
ultras in Europe and the Maghreb, and he has worked as an expert with
several museums in Europe on such themes.
Roger Magazine is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Universidad
Iberoamericana in Mexico City. He is author of Golden and Blue Like My
Heart: Masculinity, Youth and Power Among Soccer Fans in Mexico City
and other publications on organized supporter groups and on football
and nationalism.
xiv Notes on Contributors

Raúl Eduardo Martínez obtained Sociology degree at Universidad de

Antioquia, Medellín. He obtained Architecture and Construction degree
and also master’s degree in habitat from the Universidad Nacional de
Colombia, where he has worked as a professor. Additionally, he is a
researcher specializing in issues relating to sports, the city, coexistence,
and armed conflict.
Verónica Moreira is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires
(Universidad de Buenos Aires) and researcher at CONICET (National
Council for Scientific and Technical Research), Argentina. Moreira is
coordinator of the Working Group “Sports, Culture and Society”, Latin
American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).
Aldo Panfichi is vice president for Research at the Catholic University
of Peru. Panfichi is a professor and researcher at the Department of Social
Sciences and the Graduate School at the same university. Panfichi is for-
mer president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and has
a PhD in Sociology from the New School for Social Research (New York).
Aage Radmann is an associate professor, has a PhD in Sport Sciences
and is working at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway.
He is a sports sociologist, and his research is mainly in the fields of cul-
tural sociology with focus on (social) media, gender, football culture,
hooliganism, youth culture, and sport tourism.
Loïc Tregoures holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of
Lille. He is working at the Institute for High Studies in National Defence
(IHEDN-Paris), and he also teaches political science and international
relations at the Catholic Institute of Paris. His book Le football dans le
chaos yougoslave (Football in Yugoslav Chaos) was published in 2019.
Carlos Vergara is secretary of the Villa Berlin Sports Club; member of
the Cerro Los Placeres de Valparaíso Territorial Assembly; and sociologist
from the University of Valparaíso. Vergara has completed Master’s in
Territorial and Population Studies from the Autonomous University of
Barcelona, and is a PhD candidate in Geography at the Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile.
 Notes on Contributors xv

Carles Viñas is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the

Faculty of Geography and History, University of Barcelona (UB) and
Collaborate Professor of Humanities at Open University of Catalonia
(UOC). Viñas is a researcher at Consolidated Research Group Centre for
International Historical Studies (GREC-CEHI) and Research Group on
States, Nations and Sovereignties (GRENS-UPF).
 1
Football Fans in Europe and Latin
America
Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda and Thomas Busset

Today, studies on extreme football fandom have become innumerable, to

such a point that it is difficult to have an overall view. This abundant
scientific production took off during the 1970s in the United Kingdom
and gradually spread to other countries. However, the great majority of
the works remain confined to a local, regional or national context. Within
this subject of research, interest was at first focused on the question of
violence, and then expanded, in Europe at least, to those of racism and
right-wing extremism. Since the 1990s, and especially since the turn of
the century, approaches have diversified, inquiring, on the one hand, into
the effects of globalisation and the commercialisation of football, and, on
the other hand, into the responses of supporters in the face of repressive
and preventive measures concerning them.

B. Buarque de Hollanda (*)

Centre for Research and Documentation on Brazilian Contemporary History,
Getulio Vargas Foundation, Sao Paulo, Brazil
T. Busset
Centre International d’Etude du Sport, Neuchatel, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

B. Buarque de Hollanda, T. Busset (eds.), Football Fandom in Europe and Latin America,
Football Research in an Enlarged Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06473-9_1
2 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

More and more attention is thus devoted to the way in which support-
ers position themselves as football actors and defend their interests vis-à-­
vis clubs and federations, as well as the media and public bodies. The
ever-greater media attention given to football, and, in particular, the
planet-wide broadcasting of matches contested during large international
competitions, or within the framework of national championships, has
led to a deterritorialisation of supporter group membership and to the
emergence of new forms of identification with a club.
This project combines pieces of work on Europe and Latin America,
the two continents where football arouses the most ardent passions
among its spectators. Curiously, an undertaking to compare on a large
scale the forms extreme fandom takes in these two geographical areas is
still lacking. A situational analysis of the scientific literature devoted to
the subject over the last two or three decades represents a step in this
direction, making a scattered store of knowledge accessible. It thus
answers a need to clarify regional differences in identities and in the prac-
tices of supporters (Kelly 2015: 320). Beyond that, it is also a matter of
stimulating reflection on the nature of extreme fandom, with the under-
lying question of knowing on what foundation projects of a general scope
should be based.
The work contains eight contributions on Europe and five on Latin
America. To be able to best cover these two parts of the world, it was
therefore necessary to group countries together. For the sake of consis-
tency, the authors were invited to raise, as far as possible, the history of
extreme fandom in the area under consideration, its structure, its ways of
operating and the identities of supporters’ groups, the management of
extreme fandom, and finally the relationships that supporters maintain
with the political sphere. The introduction presents an overview of the
production of scientific literature on the subject of supporters on the two
continents before presenting several elements of comparison. In the con-
text of the Covid-19 pandemic, we subsequently take a retrospective look
at the events which led to the interruption of sporting competitions, and
their repercussions on the latter. The final chapter of the book proposes
an overview of the different contributions.
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 3

Latin America
Over the last quarter of the twentieth century, in the dawn of national
championships and the Copa Libertadores de América, certain groupings
of football fans have become important in Latin America (Bowman
2015), being responsible for forming a Latin American youth subculture
associated with professional South American football clubs (Frydenberg
and Sazbon 2015). Among these groups, some had continental projec-
tion and influenced the formation of supporters’ groups in Central
America, as well as inspiring supporters’ associations in Europe or even in
other parts of the globe.
In this context, supporters’ groups of the main Argentine clubs stand
out, such as La Doce, of Boca Juniors; Los Borrachos del Tablón, of River
Plate; and La Guardia Imperial, of Racing. In Chile, the Garra Blanca has
represented Colo-Colo supporters since 1986, when they started a dissi-
dent faction within Colo-Colo’s barra Quién es Chile. The Garra Blanca
was inspired in the name of a Brazilian supporters’ group linked to
Corinthians, the Garra Negra, which existed in the 1980s. The supporters
of Universidad de Chile are known for their group Los de Abajo, whereas
the Universidad Católica is followed by the group Los Cruzados.
The South American model (Morales 2013; Moreira 2005; Zucal
2013) established by the way of singing and supporting of such groups is
followed in the various countries of the continent, with local adaptations
and variants being more or less prominent. This exhaustive list still
includes the Colombian supporters’ group Los del Sur, of Atlético
Nacional, and the Ecuadorian Sur Oscura, of Barcelona from Guayaquil.
In the case of Mexican supporters’ groups, the paradigm shift under the
influence of South America’s hinchada is evident. Previously named by
the locals as porras—with a more familiar character and closer to the club
administration—the supporters’ groups have been calling themselves
barras since the 1990s. Among the examples are La Rebel, affiliated to the
Pumas team, located in the Federal District, La Banda del Rojo, linked to
the club Toluca, and the Sangre Azul, linked to the team Cruz Azul, also
located in Mexico’s capital city.
4 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

Although the information in contemporary and comparative Latin

America (Furtado 2007; Gruzinski 2003; Laclau 2013; Morse 1988;
Skidmore and Smith 2005; Todorov 1993) is facilitated today by the
speed of information and the intensification of modern media, we can
assume that we still know relatively little about the reality of football in
the region.
The Argentine researcher Pablo Alabarces, of the University of Buenos
Aires, is one of the exceptions in this regard. Formed by the teachings of
anthropologist Eduardo Archetti (2003)—author of the masterpiece
Masculinities: football, polo and the tango in Argentina—who understands
sports as a complex game of mirrors and masks of collective identities,
Alabarces is one of the investigators who contributes to systematising
what is relevant in academic production. He surpasses social essayism and
contributes to consolidating the subarea of scientific knowledge.
Alabarces’ contribution also bore fruit in the formation of a generation of
researchers in his country.
Among other themes, they focused on the understanding of the com-
plex reality of Argentine supporters’ groups, with their controversial and
ill-reputed barras. In a country with a history of more than 270 football
fan deaths since the 1920s, according to journalist Amílcar Romero, the
studies have focused on identifying anthropological aspects, namely, the
internal power structures, the territorial dynamics of this “City of sup-
porters’ groups”, the ritual on the days of the matches and the militancy
triggered by the group members, with the mapping of a kind of anthro-
pology of the “fan group morals” such as the feelings of honour, sacrifice,
loyalty, manhood and shame present in such a universe. The polysemic
word aguante—an emic category in Argentina, as the anthropologists
point out—means body resistance, that is, the physical exacerbation of a
set of practices and representations by the team, associated with support-
ing it by singing and fighting with opponents outside the stadium. The
“violent” body of the supporter seeks his male legitimacy against the
“other” and is built sometimes with hostility, or xenophobia, or sexism.
The effort of Argentine researchers inspired by Alabarces intended to
answer the question: how is it possible to understand aggressive behav-
iour in football without incurring normative judgments formulated by
public opinion and echoed by common sense? This question is the
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 5

starting point for the 2005 collection Hinchadas, a collective work with
qualified texts on a wide range of dimensions of cheering, such as the
representation of hincha in the print media throughout the twentieth
century, the symbology and the objects disputed by the different support-
ers—shirts and flags caught from opponents are seen as trophies—as well
as the codes of honour and manhood cultivated within the groups.
The work done in Argentina (Aragòn 2007) is similar to the notable
collective study conducted in Mexico over the past 10 years by a group of
anthropologists. They constituted a network and a research agenda mate-
rialised in the excellent collection Afición futbolística y rivalidades en él
México contemporáneo: una mirada nacional, organised by Roger
Magazine, Samuel López and Sérgio Varela. Ethnographic studies focus
on football affiliation and consider the comparative scale of clubs, cities
and regions in their dynamic alliances and rivalries, oppositions and
compositions that the organisers call “national urban system”.
Inspired by the work of Argentine and Mexican colleagues, this work
seeks to be a wider contribution to the subject, bringing together research-
ers from various Latin American regions (Panfichi 2008) who investigate
this sub-theme of the sports studies field, from a transnational perspec-
tive: the supporters’ groups, nucleated around their clubs and around the
professional football from a set of vicinal countries. The collection of
texts seeks to bring together researchers who have similar research inter-
ests in their regions of origin but had little communication with each
other so far. The Academy, especially in the field of social sciences, faces
the thematic of violence in supporters’ groups, considering it is a topic
already ruled and biased by the eyes of the media.
News from the mass media often echoes incidents of vandalism, urban
disorder and, more recently, of crimes associated with intergroup feuds.
An emblematic example occurred in Argentina; a fact that is somewhat
understandable due to the public notoriety of the supporters’ groups of
the main football clubs. This is the case of journalist Gustavo Grabia’s
work (2012), entitled La Doce: a explosiva história da torcida organizada
mais temida do mundo (La Doce: the explosive story of the world’s most
feared supporters’ group). The repercussion of the book was welcomed out-
side its national borders.
6 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

Although the journalist’s inspiration is a foreign study, a book by Bill

Bufford (2010), or that by Franklin Foer (2009), it should not be forgot-
ten that Gustavo Grabia’s approach echoed an intellectual thinking
already grounded in the Argentine soil. His backing was in the work of
Juan José Sebreli, who in 1998 systematised his critical theories on foot-
ball, especially against the hincha, in the book La era del fútbol.
In at least three of the thirteen chapters of his work, Sebreli unravels
the figure of the fanatic and, in the Frankfurtian style, equates the tem-
perament of the hincha with the typical traits of the authoritarian person-
ality. In substantive terms, nothing is quite distinct from Le Bon’s old
propositions on the passive, irrational, suggestible individual, who acts in
a rush when he finds himself in the crowd. The barras bravas, to a greater
or lesser extent, attack and kill their opponents, threaten and extort the
club officers, and intimidate and pressure the team players.
On the one hand, academia reacts to this kind of condemnation of
public opinion by denying or seeking to relativise the sensationalism of
the media. On the other hand, these media seek out academic experts
when dramatic cases occur such as beating deaths or firearm use. These
events cause perplexities and stir up the sport’s backstage. The theme
enters the police pages, and the situation generates an alarmist attitude of
the press. The media, in their turn, clamour for sudden solutions and
demand strong solutions from government authorities.
Due to a series of incidents accumulated in recent years, we face a
double challenge:

1. Recognising the gravity of the phenomenon and academically qualify-

ing the debate, without falling into certain pitfalls and Manichaeisms
placed by the mainstream press agenda, to avoid hasty and generalist
judgments; such recognition is on the agenda of Latin American
researchers, like the Mexican sociologist Fernando Segura Trejo (2013).
2. Knowing the importance of academic participation in a public debate
involving sports journalists, supporters (group members or not),
police officers (civil and military), club officers and state officials, with
the broader aim of developing joint public policies capable of arbitrat-
ing conflicts and proposing alternatives beyond the usual criminal-­
repressive attitude.
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 7

Moreover, Sebreli also emphasises the importance of the radically

political—or micropolitical, in the Foucaultian sense—dimension of the
supporters’ associativism and of the rationalised uses of the passion for
football teams in Latin America. The rational-passionate combination
tends to be little emphasised, since the social imagery has the habit of
placing football fan violence on the unilateral key of mass irrationality, a
rather crude and reductionist characterisation that does not cope with the
complexity of the ethos that animates people in supporters’ groups.
The interested and estimated dynamics of cohesion and conflict, of
unity and fragmentation, that pervade the trajectory of these associations
in a constant generational and spatial tension, exists in the same way as
certain social movements such as trade unions, student unions, neigh-
bourhood associations and political parties.
We emphasise three factors from which the intensification of these
internal disputes derives and which go unnoticed to the naked eye:

1. The growth and territorial enlargement of the supporters’ groups in

the Latin American countries, as Roger Magazine (2008, 2012) has
rightly demonstrated in Mexico, and the relationship with the wider
urban problem, in which local geographical belonging and national
club belonging are juxtaposed.
2. The increase in the visibility and status of the same associative entities,
though in the negative form of news of fights and clashes, which gen-
erates the demand for personal prestige and the enjoyment of the ben-
efits of those who lead these associations.
3. The economic returns that the management of a supporters’ group can
provide to their leaders, since they follow, with some variations, the
mercantile financial logic and the remarkable capitalist ethos of con-
temporary football.

Given the context exposed above, it is understood that a book with

both regional intercontinental scopes, as well as a comparative perspec-
tive, will be of great use, whether for the academic broadening of its
analyses by bringing together researchers from different continents, or for
the field of public policies, capable of developing preventive measures,
8 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

based on a more qualified understanding of the youth phenomenon of

contemporary supporters’ groups.

Europe
The studies on fandom in Europe have long been marked by the distinc-
tion made between two historical models, hooliganism “English style”
and the ultras movement which has its origins in Italy (cf. Mignon 1998).
These references and, in particular, the description of the modus operandi
of those who subscribe to one or the other of these models had become a
kind of prerequisite for local or regional monographs. Moreover, com-
parative works on the clubs of different countries frequently include at
least one English or Italian club (Ranc 2012; Numerato 2018). Today, on
the continent, the ultras movement represents “the most dominant form
of fandom in Germany, Poland, Greece, Southern France and the
Balkans”, and “elements of the ultras style have been adopted in Eastern
and Central Europe, Spain [and] Turkey” (Doidge et al. 2020: 4), and
one could be tempted to reduce the history of European extreme fandom
to that of the spread of its “Italian” variant, the United Kingdom consti-
tuting a special case.
Yet, we know that during such cultural transfers, the conditions of
implantation differ and imported practices are combined with others:
local, regional or national (Giulianotti 1999a: 39). Furthermore, prac-
tices evolve according to the cohorts and succeeding generations but also,
and most importantly, to the political, social and economic context (Pilz
et al. 2006; Testa 2009). Thus, recent scientific literature is distinguished
by a diversity of themes: while the question of violence (Armstrong 1998;
Frosdick and Marsh 2005), political extremism and racism (Back et al.
2001; Busset et al. 2008; Gabler 2009) were at the centre of many proj-
ects, attention has gradually shifted to globalisation, localism and trans-
nationalism (Giulianotti and Robertson 2007; King 2003; Millward
2011), militancy and activism (Basson and Lestrelin 2014; Cleland 2010,
2015; Garcia and Zheng 2017; Numerato 2018; Turner 2021;
Williams 2013).
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 9

In the United Kingdom and on the continent, some authors have

raised the question of knowing whether the fans constituted a social
movement (Hourcade 2014; Millward 2011; Millward and Poulton
2014; Testa 2009). One of the consequences of this widening perspective
is that many researchers no longer use the term “hooliganism” to refer to
militant fandom in general, preferring to reserve the word for the English
style in which violent confrontation played a major role. This abandon-
ment of the word is also explained by the fact that, in common usage, the
hooligan is put in the same category as a thug or a delinquent who engages
in acts of violence during sporting competitions, and the fact that, in
public debates, with which scientific researchers have often been associ-
ated (Alabarces and Moreira 2017: 465–466), it was practically no longer
possible to set out the various expressions and facets of extreme fandom.
In addition, this choice of terminology can be interpreted as a concession
to the protagonists of the ultras movement who, in these debates, have
always made an effort to minimise the importance of violence among them.
In the United Kingdom, where football was transformed earlier and
more extensively than elsewhere in the world over the last two or three
decades, the organisation of supporters’ responses in the face of this
change stimulated innumerable works which analysed the internal and
external ramifications of this trend. For an overview of this literature, we
refer you to the contribution of Cleland and Giulianotti in the present
volume. Here, we will be content with bringing up two points which
have been raised echoing these studies, as they indicate the directions of
research that so far have been little explored.
In fact, two criticisms have emerged: one regretting that the works
done still neglected the new categories of supporters which appeared in
the wake of the structural changes in football, in particular concerning
women and families (Millward 2011: 74), the other lamenting the fact
that these same works broadly ignored the way in which the sport was
lived and consumed in everyday life, away from the stadiums, and that
they especially neglected fans who do not regularly attend live matches
(Crawford 2004: 33; see likewise Stone 2007). To remedy this, Garry
Crawford, in his study of a Manchester ice hockey team (2003 and 2004),
suggested referring to the concept of career, which takes into account the
fact that human action is viewed as a process and makes it possible to link
10 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

the objective and subjective dimensions of social phenomena (Crawford

2003: 225–226; 2004: 41; Lestrelin 2012: 495).
On the continent, the fear that football might follow the same trend as
in England is spreading as stadiums are modernising and national legisla-
tion to keep the situation under control is becoming harsher and more
uniform (Tsoukala 2009), often in the run-up to a football tournament
(World Cup or European Championships). This economic and political
context favours the extension of the ultras movement from Italy towards
the north and east of Europe (Kennedy 2013: 134), an extension which
has been the subject of innumerable local and national monographies
since the turn of the century. Like in the United Kingdom, the research-
ers’ interest since then has been focused more and more on the activism
and militancy of supporters, that is to say on the defence of common
interests (Totten 2015; Numerato 2018).
What is new is that the networks are created and arise spontaneously
between groups of “enemy” fans that confronted each other, and still
sometimes do, physically and symbolically during the championships.
The motives of common struggle are varied. In Italy, for example, the
young neo-fascist ultras join forces to resist oppression from the state
apparatus (Testa 2009). In France, fans seek the assistance of lawyers to
defend their cause before courts and to lift stadium bans (Ginhoux 2016);
in Switzerland, they consult with legislators with a view to launching a
referendum against a law which targets them (Busset 2014); in Germany,
they engage in communal actions for the continuation of championship
matches on Saturday afternoons, or the retention of standing places at
low prices (Gabler 2011: 54; Merkel 2012; Kennedy and Kennedy 2012:
330). To be sure, these struggles are not specific to countries and are used
here to illustrate a point. The common denominator is the idea that fans
are the (potential) victims of the actions of other football actors (clubs,
federations, public bodies, etc.) who seek to silence them or even ban
them from stadia. More generally, the rampant commercialisation of
football is denounced, with England being the example not to follow in
this regard.
It is revealing that recent production in Europe has been characterised
by the publication of summary works, one on the ultras movement
(Doidge et al. 2020), and the other on the activism of supporters
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 11

(Numerato 2018). They respond to the need to take stock of the works
produced over the last two or three decades on these subjects, but possi-
bly also reveal that the latter have been dealt with exhaustively, to the
detriment of other themes such as gender, generations, media attention
and deterritorialisation.
However, that is forgetting that there remains a large imbalance in
knowledge between the different regions of the continent and that there
is consequently a need to catch up. Besides, the mechanisms or phenom-
ena of transferring practices have still been inadequately studied. From
this perspective, it is, for example, appropriate to analyse together coun-
tries or regions of different sizes, with very different economic weight and
whose football championships differ considerably in terms of attendance
and resonance. The influence exerted on Switzerland by its neighbours
offers a good illustration of this: the ultras style became established earlier
in the Italian- and French-speaking cantons than in the German-speaking
part of the country (Busset 2014).
The linguistic factor, and the resulting access to the media, the interest
taken in the championships of neighbouring countries (Bundesliga, Serie
A and Ligue 1) explain at least this evolution: the rise of the ultras groups
in Germany from the end of the 1990s onwards (Schwier 2005; Pilz et al.
2006) spread to German-speaking Switzerland. In the same way, the
social and educational work carried out among the fans (Fanprojekte) was
adopted by several German-speaking Swiss cities, but not in the other
linguistic regions. Finally, the experiences gained in connection with the
2006 World Cup had an impact on Switzerland during the organisation
of the 2008 European championships, especially as regards systems for
managing supporters and the adoption of relevant legislation. These ele-
ments led us to propose in this book a common chapter on the three
German-speaking countries of the continent.
In the present volume, it was in fact necessary to group countries
together in order to best cover the European continent, while still main-
taining balance in the project. This breakdown, to some extent arbitrary,
was carried out according to geographical position in relation to the areas
where the two models or reference styles originated (hooligans and ultras),
the theory being that their implantation was favoured by spatial proxim-
ity (mobility of supporters) and cultural proximity (access to the media
12 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

of the major football countries). The lines that follow provide a few crite-
ria which guided the geographical breakdowns.
A chapter specific to the United Kingdom is justified, so necessary tak-
ing into account the particular place which that country occupies in the
history of extreme fandom in Europe. The country has seen an unparal-
leled transformation due to the economic boom of the Premier League
and its resonance in the world. The media coverage of the English cham-
pionship and the interest taken in it have led to the establishment of
transnational networks of fans on a global scale and to a redefinition of
the forms of attachment to clubs (Giulianotti 1999a; Millward 2011;
Redhead 2017). Dealing separately with British extreme fandom is also
justified due to the number, richness and diversity of studies devoted to
it. Moreover, the country has four distinct championships and the rival-
ries between the nations making up this state reverberate in the manifes-
tations and practices of fans (e.g. Whigham 2014).
The grouping together of Italy and France is relevant since the fans of
the Midi region rapidly adopted similar practices to those in the Italian
peninsula (Bromberger 1995; Lestrelin 2010). Besides, the spread of the
ultras style from the shores of the Mediterranean has been extensively
studied and constitutes an interesting case of interweaving with the
English model, which has been prevalent in the north of France (Mignon
1998; Hourcade 2008). British fans have also played an important role in
the transformation of Dutch fandom and the adoption of violent behav-
iour (Spaaij 2007b: 318), and have also influenced, in turn, groups of
fans in Belgium and Germany (Spaaij 2005; Fincoeur 2008: 129–130).
The Netherlands and Belgium have also played a pioneering role in the
setting up of preventative measures against acts of violence during foot-
ball matches and major international competitions (Frosdick and Marsh
2005: 178; Spaaij 2007a; Fincoeur 2014). The motives for grouping
Germany, Austria and Switzerland together have been set out above.
From the perspective of football, in general, and extreme fandom, in
particular, Scandinavia presents a relatively homogenous picture, which
sets it apart from continental Europe (Andersson and Carlsson 2009;
Andersson and Hognestad 2019; Hognestad 2009). Scandinavia is char-
acterised by the fact that British clubs have had, since the 1970s and the
beginning of broadcasts of English championship matches, many fans,
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 13

notably in Denmark, Sweden and Norway (Goksøyr and Hognestad

1999), with as many examples of transnational fandom. On the other
hand, Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
has a particular kind of festive, colourful and humoristic fandom, whose
protagonists are referred to by the expression “carnival fans” (Giulianotti
1999b: 69).
Spain and Portugal are treated together due to their geographical posi-
tion. Even though the ultras movement became established there rela-
tively rapidly, these two countries have their own fandom traditions
which distinguish them not only from the rest of Europe (Spaaij and
Viñas 2005; Marivoet 2010) but also from each other (see Viñas
contribution).
The east-west split remains valid insofar as in countries from the for-
mer Eastern Bloc, football controlled by state bodies gave way to a neo-
liberal mode of functioning. Their clubs and their directors fundamentally
changed. Furthermore, exchanges that fans kept up with their Western
counterparts were very restrained until the opening of the frontiers.
South-Eastern Europe and ex-Yugoslavian countries should be treated
separately in that sport, and football especially, played an important role
in the wars that led to the implosion of the country.
There, fandom is characterised by residual and resurgent nationalism,
ethnic and religious divides as well as strong homophobic tendencies
(Hughson 2017: 943–944; Hughson and Skillen 2013). However, there
are also movements from citizens and politicians that seek to counter
these excesses. These sometimes resort to violence (Hodges 2016; Hodges
and Brentin 2018: 330). On Eastern Europe there are occasional studies,
some of which are very recent, for example, on Poland (Pilz et al. 2006:
188–211; Kossakowski 2017a, 2017b, Grodecki and Kossakowski 2021),
Romania (Guţu 2016), Russia (Gloriozova 2016) or the Ukraine
(Ruzhelnyk 2016), but, to our knowledge, there is no overview.
14 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

Uniformity and Diversity in Extreme Fandom

The authors who have carried out comparisons between the two conti-
nents have generally made reference to the ultras, the dominant form of
extreme fandom in Europe (Doidge et al. 2020: 182), and to the
Argentinian barras, whose modus operandi has inspired militant support-
ers in other countries of the South American continent (de Hollanda
2014: 214). It has emerged that while South American groups resemble
their European equivalents in some respects (level of organisation, bois-
terous chanting, pyrotechnic displays at matches, violent behaviour, etc.),
they differ from them particularly due to their long-standing and persis-
tent conflicts with law enforcement, and especially the relationships they
maintain with sporting and political leaders (Giulianotti 1999a: 58;
Giulianotti and Robertson 2007: 175; Spaaij and Testa 2017: 365–366).
One explanation offered is that Argentinian clubs are organised in
associations whose committees are elected by the members (Cleland
2015: 114). To that, we could answer that this structure, mutatis mutan-
dis, is to be found in Spain around clubs built around the principle of
socios (like FC Barcelona or Real Madrid), who as voting shareholders
have leverage against (future) directors (Spaaij and Viñas 2005, 2013).
Does Spanish extreme fandom thereby resemble that of Argentina?
Similarly, in Germany, where since 1998 the statutes of the Bundesliga
provide that a club can establish itself as a joint stock company as long as
it continues to hold the majority of voting rights during a general assem-
bly (rule of 50 + 1), the members can, at the very least, express their
opinions at general assemblies and sometimes create a stir, as shown by
the heated debates which took place at the end of 2021 at FC Bayern
Munich, over a sponsoring contract entered into with Qatar Airways.
Still on the level of comparison, it is commonly observed that both the
barras and the ultras make use of violence according to the situation, but
that the said violence is not an end in itself. However, this analogy is rela-
tivised by the fact that clashes are much more deadly in Argentina—and
in Brazil—than in Europe (Segura M. Trejo et al. 2019: 838; Newson
2019: 433). Moreover, the notion of aguante, which sometimes refers to
the fervour and loyalty of the groups of supporters (hinchadas), and
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 15

sometimes to the physical altercations during clashes with rivals, on

which occasion the supporter shows his valour, his courage and his mas-
tery of combat techniques, does not have an equivalent in Europe.
The phenomenon of the aguante, which became predominant in the
Argentinian football scene during the 1990s, legitimises aggressive behav-
iour and makes up an essential component of the identity of the barras
(Alabarces et al. 2018: 478–479). The ultras, for their part, state that they
only use violence in response to provocations, offering a good illustration
of the paradox of the chicken and the egg. It turns out, from this simpli-
fied overview, that the few elements we have at our disposal remain, all in
all, superficial. Fruitful comparisons can only be made around collabora-
tion between researchers from the two continents founded on common
issues. The approach consisting in referring to “native” categories, which
the supporters invoke to define themselves, seems at first glance to yield
poor results. At the outset, it runs into problems of definition: what do
we mean by barras and ultras? Doidge, Kossakowski and Mintert (2020:
5–10) demonstrated the heterogeneity of the ultras.
This disparity is striking in the area of relations with the political
world: while some groups insist on their neutrality—everyone is free as
regards political opinions, but they are not to be expressed at the sta-
dium—others are situated on the extreme right and chant racist, xeno-
phobic or nationalist slogans, and yet others place themselves on the
extreme left and participate in anti-discrimination campaigns and
denounce the excesses of capitalism. The authors cited are correct to call
for caution in any generalisation. The other trap consists in giving too
much weight to local peculiarities, knowing that imported practices are
combined with local, regional or national elements in accordance with
the conditions under which they took root (Giulianotti 1999a: 39).
Consequently, the question is raised of knowing to what extent the
result of this interweaving is faithful to the original. In the present work,
Carles Viña judges it inappropriate to use the term ultra to refer to
Spanish militant supporters, even though the word features in the names
of many groups and the country is often counted among those men-
tioned to illustrate the Italian influence. Likewise, Onésimo Rodríguez
Aguilar considers that it is not relevant to refer to the barras and aguante
categories in relation to Central American extreme fandom, as other
16 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

authors have done, since according to him, local elements remain too
prevalent to allow it to be a question of borrowing the Argentinian model.
These considerations reveal that there exists at the very least a margin
of interpretation regarding the degree to which practices become estab-
lished. They also lead us to ask if there is not sometimes a tendency to
reinforce unifying elements and from there to excessively generalise con-
cerning the impact of the dominant models. For researchers who work on
territories located outside the major football countries, it may be tempt-
ing to insert the subject of their study into a “big picture”, in the hope of
someday being mentioned in a footnote. Besides, a great many publica-
tions spring from authors who belonged or still belong to the movement
or the group they are analysing. In the context of a project, the collective
Football Supporters Europe Fan Researchers Group assigned itself the
following objective: “to collect knowledge about the development of
local, national and transnational fan cultures in Europe under the influ-
ence of professionalised mega-events” in order to be able to “support fan
activists in subsequent competitions, if required” (Doidge et al.
2019: 714).
This kind of undertaking is of course legitimate, and after all we all
agree that the university must not be an ivory tower (Jarvie 2007). It
does, however, become problematic when the researcher becomes a
spokesman for the movement and adopts the arguments defending it.
For this purpose, there is above all the risk that his interpretation of an
activity may overlap with that of the journalist with whom he is confer-
ring and that these statements may be reduced to mere banality (Alabarces
and Moreira 2017: 465). A study on the careers of the researchers who
analyse extreme fandom and on the production of material on the subject
is sorely lacking.
Despite the reservations expressed above, it is necessary to ask ques-
tions about the reasons for the spread of the two models, the ultras in
Europe and the barras, which also became established in the Andean
countries, and from the turn of the century onwards, in Brazil (see con-
tribution from Lopes et Teixeira) and in Mexico (see contribution from
Magazine). What is it that leads individuals or groups to adopt or appro-
priate, at a given moment, a practice or a style, or to become part of a
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 17

movement? The European case, for which we have many references avail-
able on the continental scale, is likely to provide some answers.
While the attachment of a fan to a club was for a long time expressed
through regular presence at the stadium, therefore presupposing geo-
graphical proximity, these links have become, as we have seen above,
partly stretched and delocalised under the influence of the merchandising
(commodification) of football and the multiplication of channels for the
broadcasting and replay of matches on a planet-wide scale (Brown et al.
2008: 305). To take into account this diversification in the environment
of professional clubs run according to market principles, Richard
Giulianotti (2002: 31) has drawn up a typology [taxonomy] of support-
ers along two axes, one symbolising the degree of fervour (from “hot” to
“cool”), the other representing the nature of the link (from “traditional”
to “consumer”) and thus defined four ideal types of spectators: support-
ers, fans, followers and flâneurs.
While the supporter has strong emotional (hot) and durable (tradi-
tional) attachments to a club which he supports with fervour at the sta-
dium, the follower focuses his interest on one or several clubs, or on
players or coaches [managers] which he follows above all through the
media. Similarly to the supporter, the fan (hot/consumer) develops a form
of intimacy or passion for his chosen club or favourite players, but this
relationship is more distant and is most often expressed through the con-
sumption of derivative products (from the shirt to the toaster). Finally,
the flâneur embodies the postmodern spectator who maintains “a deper-
sonalized set of market-dominated virtual relationships, particularly
interactions with the cool media of television and the Internet”
(Giulianotti 2002: 38).
In the view of the great majority of the clubs in the upper divisions of
national championships, followers and flâneurs represent (so far) a negli-
gible or marginal phenomenon in the sense that they bring no income to
the club. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the absence of
paying spectators caused cash-flow problems to a large number of clubs;
in Switzerland, for example, the State granted repayable loans and non-­
repayable grants to professional and semi-professional clubs “in order to
maintain the structures of team sports in Switzerland”.
18 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

According to the typology set out above, we are dealing primarily, in

this volume, with supporters, and to a lesser extent with fans. This classifi-
cation invites several comments. First of all, it disregards the fact that the
status of an individual changes over time, as stated above. This point
refers back to the fact that the works done on extreme fandom have been
above all interested in recruitment, and in proclamations (voice), but very
little in disengagements or defections (exit), an observation which has
also been made regarding literature on political militancy (Fillieule 2009:
180). Finally, the term “traditional” refers to actions or activities which
have become a part of habits or common practice; however, the adoption
of the ultra or barra style is part of a break from the past, on the subject
of which we often talk of a change of generation (see, e.g. the contribu-
tion of Lopes and da Câmara Teixeira).
In the case of the ultras movement, we must therefore address the ques-
tion of how forms of extreme fandom considered dated have not only
resisted globalisation but have also become more widespread. In order to
answer, we must remember that the generation of founders had been
influenced not only by English hooligans but also by political and social
protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Italy, from which it bor-
rowed certain elements that it brought into a new context in the stadiums
to flaunt the superiority of the local club and supporters over the oppos-
ing camp and to denigrate the latter (De Biasi and Lanfranchi 1997: 96).
While in Italy a number of groups have continued to display extremist
affiliations, with the left or the right (Numerato 2015; Scalia 2009), this
political element has not been adopted in France, for example, even
though numerous exchanges exist between radical groups in the two
countries (see contribution of Louis). Though this tendency towards an
apolitical stance is far from being generalised (cf. Grodecki 2021:
761–763), it is by contrast interesting to note that where the supporters’
range of action had dispensed with political dealings, it could subse-
quently be re-politicised to defend the cause of supporters, their banners
from that point condemning the abolition of standing places, the stagger-
ing of matches over several days of the week, etc.
Thus Numerato (2018: 9) makes a distinction between, on the one
hand, activism in football, which refers to the nature and the conditions
of extreme fandom or the culture of football, and, on the other hand,
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 19

activism through football, which raises wide social and political questions
which go beyond the strict framework of football. In that sense, the same
author (2018: 115) observes that claims pertaining to matters directly
concerning supporters enjoy stronger support than struggles concerning
wider matters. The remarkable aspect is that cohesion is strong enough to
allow a wide spectrum of opinions and claims, to which not all support-
ers necessarily subscribe, a characteristic which already strengthened the
movement in its beginnings. Nevertheless, it must be asked to what
extent these political involvements give rise to conflicts within support-
ers’ collectives and lead to defections. Decision-making structures and
the functioning of power inside the groups also remain in the shadows.

 andemic Vicissitudes, Football Globalisation

P
and the Universe of Supporters’ Groups
The preparation of this book started before and continued after the unex-
pected outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. All chapters had already
been written, but we felt the book could not neglect to put in context
certain global effects of the health crisis and the way in which both sports
stakeholders and football supporters’ groups, without being able to attend
matches in stadiums, dealt with the situation in economic, professional
and emotional terms. In this introductory section, we will address, both
panoramically and specifically, some aspects of this global event—or
more precisely in our case, intercontinental event—related to football
supporters’ practices and representations in the face of this extraordinary
pandemic context.
As is widely known, it was at the turn of the nineteenth to the twenti-
eth century that modern sports spread across the various continents of
the world. Together with the British Empire’s expansion around the
world, the colonial partition of Africa and Asia and large-scale intercon-
tinental migratory flows, the turn of the century saw several sports spread-
ing around the world. Of course, different countries and continental
regions varied in their adoption of, or preference for, specific sports, such
20 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

as Britain’s colonies or former colonies like India, Australia and the

United States, which adapted, popularised or created their own sports.
Football was a success story in this process due to its capacity for inter-
nationalisation—“the general language of a non-verbal idiom”, in the
words of the Brazilian intellectual José Miguel Wisnik (2008: 15)—
although, at first, its diffusion was more rapid in continental Europe and
South America, concurrently with increasing migration flows and the
founding of sports clubs. While Olympic sports were institutionalised
with the reinvention in 1896 of the modern Olympics in Greece by the
French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in the wake of the creation of the
International Olympic Committee, football created its own International
Federation, FIFA, almost a decade later in 1904, thanks to the efforts of
sports agents and of a French-speaking institution, initially based in Paris.
Despite its parallel exercise in sports diplomacy, bringing together ath-
letes from different nations to engage in symbolic disputes and competi-
tions, the first obstacle met by the modern Olympics was the First World
War (1914–1918). The military confrontation disrupted the quadrennial
regularity of the Olympic Games, so that the 1916 edition had to be
postponed until 1920, when the competitive tradition was resumed, in
Antwerp, a city in Belgium.
Less directly involved in the armed conflict in Europe, South America
also saw a disruption in sports competitions during this period, but
caused by another factor reflecting the historical global dynamics of
expansion and retraction: the spread of the Spanish flu, which devastated
the world in the late 1910s. Preparations for the third edition of the
South American Football Championship in 1918, the first to be held in
Brazil, had to be interrupted as the disease spread. Part of the population,
especially in São Paulo, was subjected to compulsory confinement by the
state government at the time. Along with local competitions, the III
South American Championship was suspended and could only take place
a year later, in 1919, when, at the Fluminense stadium in Rio de Janeiro,
then Brazil’s capital, the Brazilian national team was crowned champion
over the feared and imposing Uruguayan team in an exciting match.
After the war and the epidemic’s end, the sports and football calendars
were able to resume their regular schedules, with world tournaments
every four years. A stable competitive format was thus structured, driven
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 21

by a progressive expansion of the reach of international competitions. A

peculiar type of sports-cultural diplomacy was initiated, a kind of League
of Nations around sports in the interwar years (1919–1939).
Sports calendars were disrupted by military conflicts, humanitarian
dramas and health problems on a global scale. The quadrennial regularity,
both of the FIFA World Cup from 1930 onwards and of the Olympic
Games organised by the IOC since the nineteenth century’s end, was
only interrupted by these extraordinary situations that affected collective
life worldwide. World War II, for instance, prevented the holding of
intercontinental sporting events for more than a decade. With the end of
hostilities in 1945, global sports entities were strengthened and became
even more institutionalised, making sports competitions a planetary-­
scale affair.
The twentieth century’s second half was greatly favoured by the devel-
opment of mass media, in particular by the advent of television. Television
enabled an improvement in the ability to cover tournaments and broad-
cast real-time images of them. Along with in-person spectators, a TV
audience emerged and led to an exponential extension of the sports
events’ demographic reach, whether of professional football or ama-
teur sports.
While no macro-scale interruptions have occurred since then, the
Cold War generated competitive tensions and was reflected in an unfold-
ing drama of nations in dispute for primacy in sports achievements and
medals. The period saw a struggle between sports powers for symbolic
hegemony, such as that between athletes representing the United States,
the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, among other countries with broad geo-
political influence.
In the twenty-first century, during the era of “globalisation”—that is,
the weakening of the nation-state and the intensification of the circula-
tion of goods, people and information around the world, with the cre-
ation of a series of transnational interdependencies—the ubiquitous
television coverage of mega sporting events has become even more rele-
vant. In addition to the World Cups disputed by national teams, conti-
nental and intercontinental football club championships gained
momentum and prominence, changing how football matches are watched
and experienced.
22 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

In this phase of so-called globalised football, the global reach of foot-

ball clubs expanded even more, with Latin American fans claiming affec-
tion for, identification with and affiliation to one or more multi-millionaire
foreign clubs. These, as is known, have become global brands since 1990,
such as Italy’s Juventus, France’s Paris Saint-Germain and England’s
Chelsea, Manchester United or Liverpool, among other European clubs,
with their celebrated and hyper-famous football stars.
This aestheticised sporting scene, responsible for the production of
mega sporting events and football tournaments with a global reach, was
shaken by the swift and unexpected arrival of Covid-19 and all the para-
lysing effects it has caused around the world since January 2020. The ban
on stadium attendance was the first precautionary measure adopted in
Italy, the European country initially hardest hit by the pandemic. Little
by little, in a domino effect, all European countries also forbade stadium
attendance. The exception was the Belarus League, whose football cham-
pionship was not interrupted by a decision of the country’s authorities.
This situation had an unusual effect. During the crisis, the sports betting
market was one of the most affected sectors, and the Belarus football
league became practically the only option for loyal bettors, as reported in
an article in The Guardian, a London newspaper, dated March 30, 2020:
“From basketball in Tajikistan to the weather: how gambling companies
are riding out Covid-19”.
Initially, the strategy of avoiding crowds led to matches being played
with closed gates, with players on the field, but without fans in the stands
accompanying and supporting the teams. The measures began to be
implemented in February 2020, when the speed and impact of the spread
of the coronavirus were not yet clear, nor how long the pandemic would
last. The harmful effects were mitigated by not suspending the matches,
which guaranteed the continuity of television broadcasts of the Big-5
leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France), a major showcase
for world club football, and responded to the pressures from sponsors.
As days and weeks passed, this situation of partial suspension, that is,
with matches maintained but the presence of fans prohibited, became
unsustainable, especially with the drama afflicting northern Italy and,
next, Spain, France and England, the successive European pandemic epi-
centres. In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO)
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 23

declared the Covid-19 outbreak a worldwide pandemic and sounded the

alarm for sports governing bodies and their affiliated clubs. The most
drastic measure was then taken for an indefinite period: total stoppage of
matches and championships in Europe.
In a murky and uncertain scenario during the first quarter of 2020, the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) stood out for its initial resis-
tance to changing the Olympic calendar. With the imminence of the
Tokyo Summer Olympics, initially scheduled for last year’s July, the
organisation postponed the announcement of the tournament’s suspen-
sion as long it could, calculating that there was a possibility that the situ-
ation would return to normalcy in time to maintain the initial dates set
for the games in Japan.
But it was just an illusion. With increasingly gloomy prognoses and
the unstoppable spread of contagion, the reluctant Swiss Committee
ended up taking a drastic measure and postponed the summer games in
the Japanese capital by one year, a decision that was not without damage
to the host city and the Committee itself, given the already signed con-
tracts for sponsorship and broadcasting rights. This measure’s cost was
estimated by the local Olympic committee at 13 billion reais (about
US$2.5 billion). In this regard, FIFA suffered less impact, since its main
tournament is only scheduled for 2022 in Qatar.
In fact, debate and pandemic alike arrived, albeit with some delay, in
Latin America. The alarming situation resulted in social distancing and
quarantine measures, which affected both state football tournaments in
Brazil and the regular training of athletes preparing for the Tokyo
Olympic Games. Once again, in the Latin American context, an anodyne
and unusual case have drawn attention: Nicaragua was the only country
that did not interrupt its sporting calendar, maintaining scheduled
matches and opening the stadiums to the public, as if nothing was hap-
pening in the world that could affect the country.
Just like on the country’s finances, tax collection and productive chains,
the impact on the national sports industry was tremendous and almost
impossible to calculate. The stoppage disrupted the entire sports sector:
clubs lost revenue, players were not paid in full, the media had to deal
with programming blanks, sponsors had no way to expose their brands,
etc. In a more dramatic situation, smaller and small-city clubs laid off
24 B. Buarque de Hollanda and T. Busset

their athletes, while larger clubs laid off employees and drastically reduced
their payroll.
In Brazil, the crisis, however, gave rise to solidarity initiatives: former
athletes of the 1982 World Cup Brazilian national team—such as Zico,
Falcão and Junior, among others—mobilised to participate in solidarity
efforts aimed at the infected and to collaborate in fundraising campaigns.
Clubs and players—as in the cases of Barcelona and Bayern Munich—
participated in campaigns and gave up their salaries to help victims in
their countries of origin.
In contrast, two English clubs—Liverpool FC and Tottenham
Hotspur—announced they were going to use the furlough scheme, a sys-
tem created by the UK government to put employees on leave, reducing
both wages and working hours. The clubs’ decision led to fierce criticism
and indignation from their own fans, who took a vehement stance against
the decision, forcing the clubs to reverse course.
In Brazil, the dire situation’s impact on the sports scene occurred in
other ways. Idle sports facilities were indeed used for housing hospital
beds. Many state-owned stadiums, such as São Paulo’s Pacaembu, and
arenas built for the 2014 World Cup, such as that of Manaus, in the
Amazon, became campaign hospitals. The mobilisation also reached
other actors in the football world. Several Brazilian supporters’ groups, in
an effort to improve their image stigmatised by violence, promoted char-
ity campaigns aimed at the homeless. Gaviões da Fiel, for example, which
has around 100,000 members and is linked to Corinthians, a club from
São Paulo, opened their headquarters to house Covid patients, while
Mancha Verde, the largest association of Palmeiras supporters, managed
to collect 100 tons of food items for donation to vulnerable urban and
indigenous communities in the São Paulo state’s smaller cities.
These actions generated less media repercussion but took place in sev-
eral of the country’s state capitals. Without being able to attend stadium
matches, many of these supporters’ groups have adopted alternative strat-
egies to maintain the bond with their clubs in any way they could. Due
to social distancing mandates, the solution was to invest in communica-
tion via social media. This time, supporters’ groups resorted to a series of
live broadcasts with their leaders and guests from the football world, in
 1 Football Fans in Europe and Latin America 25

order to cultivate the bond between groups and members, in view of the
impossibility of meeting in person at stadiums.
TV stations, in turn, had to resort to creative measures to get around
the absence of matches in their programming. To that end, they made use
of the expedient of reruns of matches between clubs and national teams.
Famous victories were broadcast again with a view to exploiting their fan
viewership’s fond memories of past achievements. Also in Brazil, “mythi-
cal” World Cup victories, such as the third World Cup won in 1970 in
Mexico, were commemorated with full reruns of all the Brazilian national
team’s matches. The novel ingredient introduced was the new narration
of the matches aimed at recreating the tri-championship climate through
the interplay between past and present, which produced the illusion of
experiencing a live event. In parallel, the achievements of popular clubs,
such as Flamengo, Corinthians and São Paulo, occupied the program-
ming of both broadcast and cable TV channels.
In May 2020, Europe was once again considering a gradual resump-
tion of sports competitions, together with a gradual relaxation of social
distancing measures. Germany led the way in this process, resuming
Bundesliga matches with closed gates and with a set of rules for in-person
contact between players, coaches and staff. It is worth mentioning that
Germany was one of the European countries least affected by the health
crisis due to an extensive mass testing system and, therefore, it could
resume more rapidly the championships. Even in this context, the return
of high-level football events was not without controversies.
Reacting to the return of football matches, some German ultras, and
European supporters as a whole, declared their opposition to the measure
in manifestos against resuming matches without stadium attendance,
pointing out that there was no sense in emotionless matches with empty
stands. All over the country, German fans strung banners in stadiums
questioning what they called “ghost games” (Geisterspiele). The criticism
was not limited to the absence of supporters in stadiums. Supporters’
groups questioned whether the health crisis allowed for football matches
to be resumed. In short, they criticised what they called the Lex Bundesliga:
at a time when many of Germany’s non-essential services were closed,
would it be justified to resume football tournaments? To a large extent,
the economic argument prevailed, and many Bundesliga managers saw
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