Why Fans Matter? Fans and Identities in the Soccer World

Introduction: perspectives on fans and identities in soccer

Kausik Bandyopadhyay

Part I: Whose Fan You Are? National, Local and Club Identities

1. Race and whiteness in football talk amongst English fans: audience receptions of televised national team coverage

Jacco van Sterkenburg and Max Walder

2. ‘Liverpool daft’: the growth of British football clubs’ supporters’ clubs in the late twentieth century in Ireland - a history

Conor Curran

3. The end of terraces? Fans’ identity in times of crisis in Poland

Radosław Kossakowski

4. Why win a World Cup? Thirty-six years of football and nation(alisms) in Argentina

Pablo Alabarces, Juan Branz and José Garriga Zucal

5. Multiple football codes and their spectators, fans and supporters in Australia

Roy Hay

6. Club, nation, player: conflicted fan identities in African soccer

Wycliffe W. Simiyu Njororai

7. Becoming a Chinese football fan: an examination of the influence of national and local identities on the development of Chinese football fandom

Kaixiao Jiang and Alan Bairner

Part II: Expressing Fandom: Players and Fans

8. ‘Could have been a god but chose to be a Devil’. The 2004 European Championships and Wayne Rooney’s departure from Everton Football Club

David Kennedy and Peter Kennedy

9. Does anyone care where they are from? The importance of locally trained players in English football

Steve Bullough, Lee Edmondson and Andrew Mills

10. ‘You, me, we’: shared identities of African professional footballers’ diaspora in Thailand

Chuenchanok Siriwat

11. ‘Weeping at Vasermil’: players, fans and tears

Amir Ben-Porat

12. The role of soccer and identity in Egyptian society: fans and players

Mariam M. Hassan

Part III: The Critical Fan: Social and Political Identities

13. Symbolic identities in football: a view from political science

Christos Kassimeris

14. Taking sides in conflict and the question of antisemitism in Scottish football

Joseph. M. Bradley

15. ‘Brigate Verde…a terrible beauty is born': an exploratory examination of the social leadership of the Green Brigade

Andrew Burnett

16. Eurocentric globalization of football. Coloniality, consumption, social distinction and identities of transnational fans in Latin America

Kevin Daniel Rozo

17. East Bengal-Mohun Bagan football fans and Indian politics: parochialism and nationalism in simultaneity?

Avipsu Halder

18. Beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fans: exploring the mechanisms enabling football fans’ position as a stakeholder in the management of circulations

Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen

Part IV: FIFA Men’s World Cup: The Ultimate Fan-Stage

19. Africa united: exploring the fandoms around the African Men’s Qatar 2022 World Cup teams among fans in Harare, Zimbabwe

Manase Kudzai Chiweshe

20. Victory for Africa or the Arab world? Moroccan nationalism, Arab exceptionalism, pan-African solidarity and digital fandom during the 2022 FIFA World Cup

Lyton Ncube, Chengeto Pauline Mkwendi and Amos Batisayi

21. Nationalism or cosmopolitanism? How Chinese football fans viewed the Japanese team and Japanese fans during the 2022 Men’s World Cup

Chun Wing Lee

22. The quest for authenticity amid activism and sportswashing: a netnographical study of Chinese satellite fans during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup

Ryan Chen, Yiran Su and Adam S Beissel

23. ‘Our team will definitely win the cup’: the Keralan support of Brazil and Argentina during Men’s World Cup 2022

Ana Raquel Romeu Aguiar

Epilogue

24. The football commentator and the social commentator: a conversation

Jack Woodward and Kath Woodward

Biography

Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Professor of History at West Bengal State University, Kolkata, India. Formerly a Fellow of the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne and the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, he is also Deputy Executive Academic Editor of Soccer and Society (Routledge).