[Hello, just a reminder that the Mquzama Book Review Blog has moved to substack. This blog post can be found on the Mquzama substack page here. New book reviews are being posted exclusively on Substack and this Medium Page will be discontinued soon]
The Qatar World Cup brought to the mainstream important questions about the role of politics in football. Should football be used to send a political message? What about fans? Or is football inherently political because we live in a political society? Football, Identity and Politics addresses these specific questions and more highlighting how football has historically been and continues to be an apt reflection and moulder of the political and social processes in a community. Even for those that are not football nutjobs like me, I would say this edited volume still has something for you, especially if you are interested in understanding how inequalities are reflected and reproduced in society.
This book is divided into four themes which look at the relationship of football with Politics of National Identity, Construction and Reflection of National Identity, Politics and Role of Language and Grassroots Identity. I will shamelessly use the same sections to demarcate my review (yes, I am still lazy).
Politics of National Identity
Focusing on Northern Ireland, this section of the book is centred on how the politics of identity within the country is reflected in football spaces. Here, football is used to highlight both the historic and contemporary impact of socio-economic divisions between Protestants and Catholics. Katie Liston and Matt Deighan trace these fissures, especially within the national team, in protestants’ (the historically dominant group in Northern Ireland) responses to their dwindling influence due to population, social and political changes. Hence, they have historically used their privileged position in the sport to politically link the national team’s identity to theirs, reflected in the team’s symbols and fan culture e.g. use of the British national anthem, anti-catholic chants at matches and targeting of players with perceived Catholic allegiance. Illustratively, a protestant player interviewed in the first essay highlighted that “attending international matches at the Windsor Park was akin to other cultural activities such as the Orange Order”.
The previously mentioned paper by Katie Liston and Matt Deighan’s introduces this section with a discussion of the political nature of national team representation, arguing that protestant players view this as a fulfilment of their protestant identity, highlighting the compatibility between the two. Conversely, this is not usually the case for Catholics as the national team’s protestant bias creates spaces that both reproduce the marginalisation of Catholics and overlook their identity. Seen this way, players don’t neutrally choose to represent their national team, but rather the team filters who represent it through the broader social and political processes that encompass it.
On the other hand, by tracing the progress of the fans from being criticized for sectarian behaviour to receiving awards for their efforts in combatting the same, in the next essay, John and Paul Bell show how the aforementioned politicised football space was reflected and later resisted in fan behaviour. The authors show how the introduction of block-booking (with a prior commitment to non-sectarian behaviour), “collectivised” and hence normalised such unprejudiced actions but individualised and othered those continuing sectarian activity in the stadium. Despite the success of the initiative, the authors critique its limited success beyond the stadium. I found this rather harsh given the stadium-based nature of the intervention and the enormity of the task of eradicating deep-seated social tensions.
The final chapter of the section by Paul Breen and Sean Huddleston does the fascinating task of highlighting how something seemingly obvious as which national team to support is a deeply political choice that is markedly accentuated by intergroup conflict. Given their historic socio-economic marginalisation and the anti-catholic football spaces, the authors show Catholics from the North still support the Republic of Ireland’s national team instead. An act of both resistance and expression.
If you get a hold of this book, I would suggest you endure the first essay, as while it is informative, the analysis tends to get lost in academic jargon that can be off-putting. In contrast, the other two are much easier reads. Additionally, I find John and Paul Bell’s essay a welcome development, as unlike just offering a critique, they have highlighted successful interventions that can be learnt from, especially in the context of growing racism and homophobia in stadiums.
Construction and Reflection of National Identity
While the first four essays look at how football has reflected the tensions of identity (nationality? patriotism?), the next four chapters look at how historically, football has been used to refine identities, underpin ideologies and inculcate patriotism. If before football was a mirror of society, it is now an instrument used to shape it.
Starting with the chapter that left me with more questions than answers, Jim O’Brien’s essay on football and Peronism intended to show the lasting relationship between Argentinian football and President Juan Peron’s (1946–1955 & 1973–1974) political culture of “authoritarian populism”. While he highlights how Peron used an idealised image of the national team to garner political legitimacy both locally and internationally as well as hide social divisions, he does not adequately establish the link between this process and the national team’s World Cup (WC) performances. Given that he devotes a great deal of his chapter to these WC appearances, after almost four reads of the essay, I am still unsure whether he was claiming a causation between Peronism and lacklustre on-the-pitch performances or simply articulating a metaphoric parallel. Finally, given O’Brien’s insistence on the continued role of Peronism (and anti-Peronism) in defining the politics that birthed Argentina’s alleged continued football shortcomings, it will be interesting to see how the country’s recent WC success fits into this framework.
Examining the historic and contemporary relationship between football and the military, Danny Fitzpatrick’s essay in this section argues that the resurgence of calls for remembrance is a reflection of the broader evolving politics of militarism. Drawing on football’s mass appeal, range of spectators and the “symbolic capital” of public grief, the state and actors like the Royal British Legion, are argued to be using remembrance (e.g. the poppy) to both recentre military fondness and galvanise the public in the context of “perceived loss of British identity” in a rapidly globalising world. I was slightly surprised that the author did not deconstruct Prince William’s (then president of the English FA) claim that the poppy was a “universal symbol of remembrance”, assertions that depoliticise the British military’s connection with colonialism and conquest, which manifests in resistance towards the poppy, in countries like the Republic of Ireland.
Also nestled in this section is Philip Dine’s discussion of how football has been used as a terrain of oppression, resistance and image-building in the backdrop of Algeria’s history with France. During colonisation, while matches were hotspots for riots from indigenous Muslims and a target of symbolic bombings, it was the formation of the Algerian national team in exile that crystallised the struggle for independence as it was the “primary manifestation in the cultural sphere of the Algerian commitment to independence”. The mere existence of a national team is thus a political act. After independence, the author shows how football continued to serve as a vessel for protest for Algerian natives both in Algeria and France.
Finally, this section is concluded by Pavel Brunssen, Robert Claus and Peter Römer’s discussion of how the intimate relationship between football ultras and the far-right illustrates how football can be a medium for spewing political rhetoric as evidenced in their role in spreading anti-refugee discourse. Focusing on 2014–2016, this case study shows how this was done by spreading this message in stadiums (via fan chants and boycotts of matches whose ticket prices were partially donated to the refugee crisis), cross-club fans “taking to the streets” (using intimidation by participating in street protests and attacking asylum seekers) as well as “reinforcing old networks and creating new ones”.
An interesting aspect of this section is the different roles football governing bodies have taken throughout history. While FIFA banned the pre-independence Algerian National Team, it also denied England’s request to wear a poppy as it considers it a political symbol. Interestingly, UEFA donated a portion of ticket sales to help refugees. Thus, these chapters raise interesting questions regarding the consistency of UEFA or FIFAs actions. Juxtaposed with the football sanctions on Russia, can these bodies still claim to be apolitical? What determines what is considered “political” and what isn’t? Thinking out loud here, so far, I believe“apolitical” to these bodies means whatever maintains a perceived status quo.
Politics and Role of Language
Definitely my favourite section of the book, it looks at how the language used within football can be used to marginalise a specific community or group of people. It starts with Melissa Mora Hidalgo and Giovanni Hortua Vargas offering a history of a homophobic chant, “ehhhh pu**”, how it has spread, been reinforced and its impact. They argue that the chant (which translates into male prostitute) is used to queer the player (usually a goalkeeper), which is considered the ultimate insult. They provide historical context of this term and locate its pertinence in Mexican football in “normative notions of masculinity and femininity that run deep through the discourses of Mexican nationalism” and use conversations between themselves (an extremely interesting but fitting methodological choice) as a tool to highlight the impact of the chant. While the chant in itself might be specific to Mexico, insinuating that a goalkeeper who joins a rival team (the supposed origins of this chant) is a prostitute is a common practice in a lot of countries. I would have loved to see some discussion of this transnational dimension and what, if any, sets the Mexican case apart.
Continuing with the captivating methodology, in the next paper, Lotte Thissen and Leonie Cornip use their own passive participation in the Roda JC and MVV derby as fans to analyse the use of language in the politics of place-making. The essay highlights how centre (MVV-Maastricht) and periphery (Roda JC) dynamics between the two regions the clubs represent were accentuated through language. The authors’ observations of galvanising fan speeches and stadium announcements being in Maastricht dialect as well as the playing of the Maastricht anthem were argued to “evoke local identity”. The essay points out how something as seemingly mundane as the “language choice … is never socially neutral”. The apparent simplicity of this essay and its captivating methodology made me enjoy it immensely, it was definitely my favourite piece in the book. Even for me, a self-proclaimed political economy enthusiast, this essay showed me layers of the politics in football that I had never noticed.
Grassroots Identity
While the final two essays were categorised under the common theme of ‘grassroots identity’, it is a slightly confusing classification as while the first one looks at (grassroots?) fan action, the other is clearer in focusing on the political economy of grassroots football.
Anyways, the section starts with Radoslaw Kossakowski and Mateusz Grodecki’s exploration of the ways fans have used their social capital to revive their football clubs from financial ruin in Poland. The authors show how this was done using the Call To Arms approach, involving the use of non-structured ways of supporting a club (e.g. a volunteer fan driving players to matches), Appropriable Social Organisations which are typified by repurposing existing fan structures (e.g. supporters associations) and finally Intentional Social Structures, where “structures are established in order to effectively achieve specific objectives”.
Finally, the last paper in the book by Daniel Parnell, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Anthony May and Paul Widdop examines the political economy of grassroots in the United Kingdom. Despite the importance of grassroots football in fostering improved health outcomes and its ability to reach socially marginalised groups, the authors show that this aspect of the game has been historically neglected. This has worsened with austerity policies (which disproportionately cut community services) and COVID-19 which re-centred the focus on just the top tiers of English football.
Given that the economic transition towards market capitalism was behind the collapse of the aforementioned Polish clubs (and the decline of the welfare state in the UK quailed momentum for grassroots football), this section not only shows that football is not exempt from the impact of structural economic change but also raises questions of how global economic changes (e.g. global financial crises) are distributed among different countries’ footballing landscapes. Put crudely, how does the vulnerability of football development nationally intersect with the unequal global distribution of the burden of capitalism’s crises?
Given the continued commercialisation of football and the inequalities both on and off the pitch that this engenders, this book provides a much-needed reference point for understanding the interactions between the beautiful game with social, cultural and political inequalities.
It importantly highlights the ways a stadium is used as a platform to both reflect internal tensions from society as well as project political narratives towards it. Simply put, it is difficult to divorce football from politics when the sport is situated in a political world.
Given the centrality of conceptions of masculinity in the disappointing aspects of football culture (racism, homophobia and fan violence), it would have been interesting to have an extensive discussion on women’s football. A comprehensive comparison of how the tensions discussed in this book are reflected in the women’s game would have offered much-needed insights and maybe even key lessons and blueprints for change.
Overall, I really enjoyed the analysis in this book, I am looking forward to more volumes from the series. Until next time.
Rating: 4/5. The book can be found here.
