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Geographical typology of European
football rivalries
Seweryn Dmowski a
a
Faculty of Journalism and Political Science , University of
Warsaw , Warsaw , Poland
Published online: 03 Jun 2013.
To cite this article: Seweryn Dmowski (2013): Geographical typology of European football rivalries,
Soccer & Society, DOI:10.1080/14660970.2013.801264
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Soccer & Society, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2013.801264
Geographical typology of European football rivalries
Seweryn Dmowski*
Faculty of Journalism and Political Science, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
The objective of this article is to create a typology of football rivalries stemming
from historical and/or present conflicts between various ethnic groups. Such
football rivalries of an ethnic nature centre on various aspects, including nation-
ality, ethnic identity, language, religion, territory or origin. The article is also
aimed at presenting the phenomenon of attachment to a club the so-called
football identity based on some component of ethnic identity. Although the
article includes references to specific examples of rivalries, its purpose is rather
to illustrate the geographical distribution of this phenomenon. The result will be
a general map of football ethnic rivalries in Europe (that is in member coun-
tries of Union of European Football Associations), which will be useful as a
spatial illustration and a starting point for further discussion and research. The
author has included not only the widely known and thoroughly examined exam-
ples of football rivalries resulting from ethnic and religious conflicts (e.g. Protes-
tant Glasgow Rangers vs. Catholic Celtic Glasgow) but also those which have
not been analysed yet (from Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, etc).
Introduction
The development of interdisciplinary research on football demonstrates that there is
a growing interest in the issue of football rivalries at international, country and local
level. This mirrors a general shift in the study of football, from examination of
anomalies and pathologies (e.g. hooliganism) towards the focus on the impact that
football has on everyday lives of millions of people around the world.1 The socio-
political background as well as sporting tensions and sociocultural factors shaping
the unique nature of the rivalry-related aspect of football have recently attracted
much attention. However, there is still need for both a more in-depth analysis of
particular case studies of football rivalries as well as far-reaching attempts to
capture the real nature of these rivalries and create a common research framework.
The author of this piece has presented a general overview of European football
rivalries which stem from historical and/or present tensions between various ethnic
groups. The author has also proposed a unique concept of typology of this political
and sociocultural phenomenon and made an attempt at creating a geographical
model of its distribution. Due to the extensive size of the examined issue and for
the purpose of clarity, the author has introduced certain restrictions to the subject of
the analysis. Firstly, the author has focused on the rivalries between football clubs
as these are usually older than the national ones, as well as more multi-layered and
more common. Secondly, the author has limited the scope of his research to the 53
*Email: seweryn.dmowski@uw.edu.pl
Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis
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2 S. Dmowski
member states of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). Thirdly,
the author decided to examine only major rivalries in each of the mentioned states
and thus have narrowed the research to the clubs which are high profile and play in
the top national leagues. Being aware of the fact that the history and the intricate
nature of political and sociocultural background behind each conflict mostly defy
comparison (e.g. England, Scotland, Germany and Spain on the one hand and Faroe
Islands and Luxembourg on the other), the author has decided to present a model
study.
Since the topic of this work is very broad, probably a book or two would be
necessary to cover it in full and hence its thorough examination in this article is not
possible. Thus, instead of searching for conclusive statements concerning the
selected case studies, the author aimed at designing a general framework for discus-
sion, posing some important research questions and inspiring further in-depth
research of various case studies. Lastly, as the popular cases of sectarian Glasgow
rivalry between Rangers and Celtic or the Castilian-Catalan resentments amongst
Real Madrid and FC Barcelona fans have already been subjected to an extensive
analysis, one of the objectives of this article was to present those examples of polit-
ical and sociocultural traditional rivalries which are not commonly known to a
wider public.
Difficulties
During the desk research on the subject of football rivalries, the author has encoun-
tered two main difficulties. The first one concerned the choice of appropriate
research methodology, whilst the second one resulted from the complexity of the
concept of ethnicity, ethnic identity and rivalry.
The aim of this study is not to offer any new or synthetic method of research
on rivalries between football teams. The author has not chosen any of the existing
approaches either, but has rather combined various elements of different methods in
order to accurately embrace the interdisciplinary aspect of this study. All the meth-
odological conclusions are based on the overview of ways of interpreting and
exploring football rivalries developed by Benkwitz and Molnar.2 The related general
shift in the nature of football study has already been mentioned in the introduction.
However, it has to be also underlined that in football research in general usually
two main perspectives are adopted the sociological one and the anthropological
one.3 The former is connected with the traditional sociological research on football
fandom, absorbed mainly with specific social pathologies (football violence, hooli-
ganism, etc.) and social relations (football fans as a social group, characteristics of
the football fandom).4 The anthropological perspective developed together with the
increasing role of football-related cultural studies and exploring football culture as
well as its impact on the daily life of ordinary people.5 As mentioned above, in his
research the author has combined the elements of both these perspectives.
Another aspect which has required specific consideration is the complex issue of
ethnic identity. The author has adopted the concept of Hutchinson and Smith, who
stated that there are basically six main features which make up ethnicity: identifying
name, ancestry (understood as the notion of common origin), history (understood as
collective memory, including heroes and myths), culture (including religion, lan-
guage, etc.), homeland (understood as the area identified as own) and the sense of
solidarity.6 This definition of ethnicity seems most adequate to research on football
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Soccer & Society 3
rivalries for two main reasons. Firstly, it is broad enough to avoid a highly special-
ized discourse on detailed aspects of ethnic identity. Secondly, it perfectly reflects
the nature of football identities which will be described in more detail further on.
In the light of contemporary study of football, we may state that examination of
club rivalries is the best means to understand this game and all that surrounds it.
The history of football is a story of rivalry and opposition. Indeed, the binary
nature of football, involving rival teams and opposing identities precedes the
modern game of association football (or soccer ) and its codification in 1865 ,
wrote Armstrong and Giulianotti:
With the establishment of football s modern rules, the game had more rationalized,
universalist framework. Accordingly, the game provided a ready background for the
expression of deeper social and cultural antagonisms that where existent anywhere on
earth. (& ) The football world continues to be strongly flavoured by these senses of
difference and rivalry.7
As the author has no intention to analyse the subject of the conceptual models for
general identification of rivalries, in this paper, he has adopted the concept devel-
oped by Giulianotti, which is centred on the idea that a football match involves two
teams representing specific geographical and cultural identities and hence it consti-
tutes the most potent dramatization of binary opposition within sport .8 Therefore,
a football rivalry should be specifically recognized as multidimensional competition
between two groups of fans supporting different clubs and having different collec-
tive identities.9 And what we deal with here is the football identity understood as
the identity of the imagined community formed with fans of a particular football
club. The concept of imagined communities has been borrowed from Anderson10
and is also reflected in the theoretical works of Edensor:
Probably the most currently powerful form of popular national performance is that
found in sport (& ). Despite the facility of sport to provide an occasion for the parad-
ing of national(ist) antagonisms, it is important to acknowledge how it can stoke up
rivalries between groups within the nation, whether ethnic or regional.11
and Hobsbawm:
The gap between public and private worlds was also bridged by sport. Between the
wars sport as a mass spectacle was transformed into the unending succession of gladi-
atorial contests between persons and teams symbolizing state-nations, which is today
part of global life. Until then such occasions as the Olympic Games and international
football matches had interested chiefly a middle-class public (& ), and international
matches had actually been established with the object of integrating the national
components of multinational states. They symbolized the unity of such states, as
friendly rivalry among their nations reinforced the sense that all belonged together by
the institutionalization of regular contests that provided a safety-valve for group
tensions, which were to be harmlessly dissipated in symbolic pseudo-struggles. It is
difficult not to recognize this element of ritual defusion in the first regular international
football matches organized on the European continent, namely those between Austria
and Hungary.12
The concept of football identity can thus be described in terms of the most impor-
tant features enumerated in the definition of ethnic identity proposed by Hutchinson
and Smith for each rivalry one can define the code of identification (name of the
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4 S. Dmowski
club), ancestry (heritage built by the club and its supporters), history (great victories
and tragic defeats, heroes and traitors), culture (crest, colours, songs and chants, rit-
uals), homeland (stadium, district, city or region) and the sense of solidarity (togeth-
erness).
Typology
The main idea of this paper is constructed around another statement made by Giu-
lianotti:
The dyadic drama of football takes place at a number of levels: players, teams, clubs
and countries. Each player is locked into a personal battle with his opposing number
(& ). Equally, football clubs establish cultural identities through rivalry and opposition.
(& ) The meanings of these football rivalries have tended to be underpinned by deeper
historical and cultural divisions.13
A conclusion may be drawn that football rivalries constitute in fact antagonisms
between conflicting football identities, often rooted in ethnicity or caused by an eth-
nic factor. Based on this assumption, we may distinguish six main ethnic factors
that determine the essence of a football identity: nationality, ethnic identity, lan-
guage, religion, territory and origin. The following typology of European football
rivalries may be developed with the above criteria.
Native citizens vs. legally recognized minorities (factor: nationality)
This type of football rivalry is obviously fairly common in multinational states with a
heterogeneous society consisting of representatives of different ethno-national origin.
A good illustration of this type of competition is the Mostar derby in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, where Zrinjski competes with Velez. HSK (which stands for Hrvatski
Sportski Klub Croatian Sport Club) Zrinjski is one of the oldest football clubs in
the Balkans, founded in 1905 by local Croatians, whilst Velez was established in
1922 as a result of the budding national Bosnian sentiment. The football rivalry
between Zrinjski and Velez has from the very beginning had the ethno-political con-
text. Zrinjski was successful in the first half of the twentieth century but after the
World War II the communist authorities of Yugoslavia liquidated it as a punishment
for its participation in the Croatian league organized by the fascist Ustasha regime.
Velez, on the other hand, had its glory days under the rule of Tito. The re-establish-
ment of Zrinjski coincided with the outburst of civil war in Yugoslavia. Since 1995,
Mostar has been a divided city, with Croatians living in its western part and Bosnian
Muslims and Serbians inhabiting the eastern districts. On account of such divide
Velez was expelled from its traditional football ground, Bijeli Brijeg, which is located
in the Croatian part of the city and is presently used by Zrijnski, and forced to move
to a much smaller Vrapcici stadium. The football rivalry in Mostar seems inextricably
linked with the ethno-nationalistic tensions discernible in the city.
Majority society vs. ethnic minority (factor: ethnic identity)
It is often claimed that the football rivalry surrounding the derby of Seville stems
from the conflict of social classes, with poorer parts of the city supporting Real
Betis Balompie and the middle-class cheering for Seville FC. Whilst this is
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Soccer & Society 5
undoubtedly true, this football enmity has also its ethnic dimension. Beticos come
mainly from the poorer, working-class districts of Seville, such as Macarena and
especially Triana old parts of the city, inhabited by a considerable Roma commu-
nity. The Roma suffered persecutions under Franco s regime, including their forced
removal from Triana. However, the majority of Seville s population supported
Franco and this formed another axis of enmity. Another aspect which contributed to
this rivalry is also the complicated history of both clubs. Seville FC was founded in
1905 and just four years later some of its players and activists left the club and
formed Betis FC, only to merge in 1914 with another local team Sevilla
Balompie, originally established in 1907.14
Dominating language vs. other language/dialect (factor: language)
De Brugse Derby may not be the most prominent football rivalry in Belgium (as it
is rather the antagonism between Anderlecht Brussels and Standard Liege that
divides Belgians across the country) but it definitely provides a good illustration of
a rivalry based on the linguistic factor. The Brugge club, which is far more success-
ful and with a stronger position on the Belgian football scene, represents the
Flemish-speaking part of the city where working-class districts are located. Support-
ers of its rival, Cercle Brugge, typically belong to the French-speaking middle-class
community with the majority descending from Dutch and English immigrants.
Believers vs. heretics (factor: religion)
The rivalry connected with the football derby of Skopje, the capital city of the For-
mer Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, is to a large extent influenced by one main
factor religion. Supporters of FK Vardar are mainly Christians of Macedonian
descent, whilst the fan base of Sloga Jugomagnat is largely Muslim and Albanian.
The social origin of Sloga s supporters is clearly visible in the name of its firm.
The blue and white fans are organized around a group called Smugglers (Svercer-
i), which gives us an insight into how these members of the Macedonian society
see and identify themselves. Vardar s supporters, with their leading fan group
Komiti, start every match day with a traditional gathering at Soborna Church.
Komiti became a synonym for football violence in the Balkans after a series of bold
hooligan raids across Yugoslavia in the 80s and are still notorious for their hostility
towards other Balkan firms visiting Skopje. What should be also mentioned here is
that even though Sverceri consider the derby against Vardar as their primary feud,
Komiti are in fact more engaged into the strife with FK Pelister and its kembari
a rivalry often referred to as the eternal derby of Macedonia .
Southerners vs. Northerners (factor: territory)
According to Giulianotti, the antagonism between football rivals is typically
reinforced by localist chauvinisms that are mapped in spatial terms. Within the
largest football metropolises, football antagonisms exist within single zones .15 The
phenomenon of a football rivalry grounded in spatial division is not entirely new
in one of the medieval ball games played in Scottish Kirkwall, the Ba game, the
traditional sides were the Uppies and the Donnies Up-the-Gates and Doon-the-
Gates teams.16 This type of rivalry is fuelled by identification with a particular
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6 S. Dmowski
territory. Such animosity may be observable along various lines of spatial division:
between districts within a city (as in the case of multiple football tensions in
London: Arsenal and Tottenham, Millwall and West Ham, Chelsea and Fulham and
many others), between the two banks of the river (Dublin Bohemians and Shamrock
Rovers), between the city centre and the suburbs (HSV Hamburg and FC
Sankt-Pauli), between the main city and the rest of the region (TSV 1860 Munich
and FC Bayern), two neighbouring cities (Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04
Gelsenkirchen), two regions within a country (Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique
Marseille) or the capital city vs. the rest of the country (the case of Legia Warsaw
in Poland). The criteria of south and north given above are only one of the
possible conventions and may be replaced with east and west (Hertha BSC and
1.FC Union in Berlin) or any other geographical categories. One of the lesser
known examples of that type of spatial football rivalry is Böyük Oyun, The Great
Game played in Azerbaijan between Neftchi Baku and Khazar Lankaran. The
successful appearance of Khazar on the Azerbaijani football scene in 2004 put an
end to the domination of the northern clubs, including the most successful club
from the wealthy Baku region, and, not surprisingly, this sparked an intense rivalry.
The team from Lankaran is commonly considered to represent the southern regions
of Azerbaijan, an underdeveloped and poor part of the country. A relatively short
history of the Neftchi-Khazar feud includes a number of acts of violence, pitch
invasions, the Great Game Marathon (in 2011 the 2 teams played against each
other 4 times over the course of 33 days, in the Azerbaijani league and the
Azerbaijani Cup) and a variety of offensive chants sung at every derby match.
The indigenous vs. newcomers (factor: origin)
This type of animosity is characteristic of rivalries within those cities which wit-
nessed a large inflow of migrants at the end of the nineteenth century and simulta-
neous economic development, which all contributed to the birth of modern football.
Football identities in such redefined communities were formed at the same time as
the social and spatial ones. This, combined with the growing popularity of the
game, understandably gave rise to football antagonisms between indigenous citizens
and newcomers arriving from the surrounding rural areas, other parts of the country
or even from abroad. This process may be easily traced in the history of Manches-
ter ( The Citizens against new inhabitants supporting Newton Heath a football
club for railroad workers, which later came to be known as Manchester United) or
Turin (the conflict between native inhabitants of the city supporting Torino and
migrants working in the FIAT factory who cheered for Juventus). However, this
type of rivalry may be driven not only by the factor of economic migration. There
is a curious case of the Derby of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki, where PAOK
and Aris compete on the pitch. Founded in 1914 and named after the Greek god of
war, Aris represents the traditional community of the city. After the 1919 1922,
Greco-Turkish War and the ensuing population exchange between the two countries,
in 1923 around 1.5 million Greek people left Asia Minor, Pontus and Istanbul.
Many such refugees settled in Thessaloniki, where PAOK ( Pan-Thessalonican Ath-
letic Club of Constantinopolitans ) was created, as a continuation of Hermes Sport
Club established by the Greek community in the Istanbul district of Pera in 1875.
The social unrest brought about by the hurried and painful immigration quickly
resulted in an open conflict between the two football teams. PAOK supporters were
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Soccer & Society 7
called Gypsies and Turks and in exchange referred to Aris fans with a heavily
insulting term skoulikla ( worms ). Thessaloniki became a battlefield for the two
main firms, Super 3 (Aris) and Thyra 4 (PAOK), named after the numbers of gates
leading to the sectors of the most passionate fans.
Naturally, the above categories of football rivalries are only theoretical and
almost never occur singly. A football rivalry is usually a multi-layered structure,
with various dimensions overlapping and reinforcing each other. The above-men-
tioned criteria of ethnic identity, language and nationality are almost always closely
related and often also connected with religion. Moreover, such factors as attachment
to a certain territory within the city or region, migration waves and the growing
importance of one s origin are all inter-connected. The examples described above
have been grouped based on the dominant ethnic aspect crucial to a specified type
of rivalry.
Geographical distribution
Creating a detailed map of European football rivalries resulting from various ethnic
factors without thorough field research in each European country would constitute a
very difficult task, if not even an unfeasible one. Therefore, with this paper, the
author would like to share only some general opinions concerning the geographical
distribution of this phenomenon, as well as demonstrate several interesting cases
where the sociocultural and ethnic reality is reflected also in football tensions.
It may be stated that football rivalries based on territory- and origin-related ani-
mosities are particularly ferocious in those countries where both socioeconomic
development and the rise of modern football occurred at the end of the 19th. Such
sources of football antagonisms played a major role in these states, even though
some of these countries are traditionally multinational. As fitting examples of such
countries Home Nations could be mentioned (England, Wales, Republic of
Ireland, although without Scotland and Northern Ireland where sectarianism and the
religious factor prevailed), as well as Germany, Austria, Switzerland or Italy. A
similar yet slightly different situation concerns such countries as France, Belgium
or the Netherlands. There, football and modern industrial society also developed
alongside, however, the ethno-linguistic factors (Belgium and the Netherlands) or
the traditional autonomy of regions, combined with the changing, postcolonial
social base (France), came to the fore.
On the other end, there are football rivalries prompted mainly by the issues con-
nected with nationality, ethnic identity, language or religion, which are, logically,
more common in the multinational European countries. This concerns, for instance,
Spain, where football also developed parallel to industrial society, yet due to the
territorial and social divisions within the country the ethno-nationalistic factor
played a much more important role in how football rivalries were forged. Other
similar examples are drawn from the countries which emerged as a result of the fall
of multinational states, in particular the post-Yugoslavian and post-Soviet republics.
Decades or centuries of coexistence within one state laid the grounds for deep
fractures in the society of such independent states which formerly were part of
federations (e.g. in the Balkan states and the Caucasus), and these are now mirrored
at the level of football competition.
It should be underlined that the process of collapse of some European states
after 1989 is a perfect pattern demonstrating how accurately football rivalries reflect
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8 S. Dmowski
the social and ethno-national reality. The tables below outline the presence of cer-
tain factors in the football club rivalries in the European countries before and after
their demise (Figures 1 3).
It is also important to add that football was a significant means for expressing
the ethnic and nationalistic sentiments in these countries (e.g. in the Soviet
Union),17 and in Yugoslavia, it even became a symbolic spark which initiated the
process of the state s collapse.18
One may think that in the European one-nation countries the situation is more
unambiguous; however, this is not entirely true. Even in the countries and societies
which are unmistakeably mono-ethnic football may function as a platform for pro-
moting and expressing regional values and identities. However, such cases are diffi-
cult to identify without a profound knowledge of all local and ethnic intricacies. In
Poland, a good illustration of this phenomenon is the fan movement of Ruch Chor-
zów from the Silesia region, which strongly advocates the idea of autonomy of
Upper Silesia, also by provoking other football fans in Poland with the use of a
huge Oberschlesien flag.19
Factors contributing to afootball rivalry present/not present
Armenia No No No No No Yes
Azerbaijan No No No No Yes No
Belarus No No No No No No
Estonia No No No No No No
Georgia No No No No No No
Kazakhstan No No No No No No
Latvia No No No No No No
Lithuania No No No No No No
Russia No Yes No No No No
Ukraine Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Soviet Union Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Figure 1. Presence of club football rivalries stemming from selected ethnic factors in the
Soviet Union and in the UEFA member countries which emerged after its demise.
Factors contributing to a football rivalry present/not present
Bosnia and Herzegovina Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Croatia No No No No Yes No
FYROM Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Montenegro No No No No Yes No
Serbia No No No No Yes No
Slovenia No No No No Yes No
Yugoslavia Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Figure 2. Presence of football rivalries stemming from selected ethnic factors in Yugoslavia
and in the UEFA member countries which emerged after its demise.
Ethnic
Origin
identity
Religion
Territory
Language
Nationality
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Ethnic
Origin
identity
Religion
Territory
Language
Nationality
Soccer & Society 9
Factors contributing to a football rivalry present/not present
Czech Republic No No No No No No
Slovakia No No No No Yes No
Czechoslovakia Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Figure 3. Presence of football rivalries stemming from selected ethnic factors in
Czechoslovakia and in the UEFA member countries which emerged after its demise.
Political context
The ethnic approach to football rivalries proposed above lacks one important aspect
crucial to football antagonisms the political one. According to Giulianotti,
in classic modernist fashion, the nation has been the principal administrative unit
within football throughout the twentieth century. Concomitantly, nationalism within
the game encapsulates the strength of national identification of specific peoples, so that
particular kinds of identity are celebrated while others are categorically excluded.
Yet national identities are never static or mononuclear. There may be a multiplicity of
national identities within any one nation, which are distinguishable along specific
structural or ideological lines, such as those relating to religion, or class, or ethnicity,
or identification with a specific sovereign. In multi-cultural societies, the heterogeneity
of nationalist voices is particularly striking.20
This concept is also used in political science research on ethnic identity, offering a
new definition of ethnic identity, which takes into account the political dimension:
[ethnic identities] are a subset of identity categories in which eligibility for mem-
bership is determined by attributes associated with, or believed to be associated
with, descent .21
Therefore, the analysis of the background of football rivalries should also
include the political category. At this level, political affiliation and involvement of
football supporters from particular clubs are the best indicators of how the politics
affects the relations between the conflicting groups of football fans. Historically, the
oldest animosity of that sort is linked with the rise of the workers movement in the
late nineteenth century, which caused a natural opposition to the conservative and
bourgeois forces. The fixtures between the clubs form the working-class suburbs
and industrial districts or cities (AC Milan, Sampdoria, Rapid Vienna, Standard
Liege, AS Saint-Etienne, Sparta Prague) and their higher-class opponents from the
city centres or wealthier metropolises (Internazionale, Genoa, Austria Vienna,
Anderlecht Brussels, Olympique Lyon, Slavia Prague, respectively) quickly became
something much more than just Sunday entertainment. In some areas, football ech-
oes much more complex and unique sociopolitical contexts, as it is the case in
Istanbul (with Galatasaray representing the traditional gentry and Fenerbahce being
supported by the middle class and proletariat s Besiktas) or Athens (where Panathi-
naikos is linked with the military rightist government, Olympiakos is supported by
the working-class from the Piraeus docks whilst AEK is favoured by those with
radical leftist views).
Political beliefs are also an important element of football rivalries in Rome,
where at least part of the fandom of Lazio, once Benito Mussolini s favourite,
Ethnic
Origin
identity
Religion
Territory
Language
Nationality
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10 S. Dmowski
openly approve of the fascist ideology, as opposed to AS Roma supporters who
have rather left-wing sympathies. A similar division may be traced in Tel-Aviv
the arena of skirmishes between radical leftists (Hapoel) and nationalists (Maccabi).
Furthermore, a number of various political ideologies or regimes in the past drew
support from the fans of different European football clubs: the fascist rule of
General Franco (Real Madrid and Seville FC), communism (AS Livorno) or
anarchism (FC Sankt-Pauli). Football clubs may also serve as the means of convey-
ing the autonomous and decentralizing tendencies, as it happens as regards Athletic
Bilbao (Basque separatists), FC Barcelona (Catalan nationalists) or Hapoel Taibeh
(Arab Palestinians). Sometimes, a rivalry may be ignited by a single political event
in 1948 APOEL Nicosia, a club with a rightist fan base, declared its support for
the Greek government in the civil war against the communist rebellion. Those
players who had socialist beliefs and refused to sign the declaration were expelled
from the club and in response founded their own team, Omonia Nicosia, setting the
stage for one of the bitterest rivalries in Cypriot sport.
Finally, there is one more dimension of the political background of football
rivalries which is relevant for almost half of Europe and which stems from the Cold
War legacy the patronage provided by the communist authorities for particular
clubs in the Eastern Bloc. Various football teams were used as a political tool by
the army (CSKA Moscow, Dukla Prague, Honved Budapest, Legia Warsaw, ÅšlÄ…sk
Wrocław, Steaua Bucharest, CSKA Sofia, Partizani Tirana, Vorwaerts Berlin/Frank-
furt (Oder)), internal security departments and the police force (Dinamo Moscow,
Wisła Cracow, Gwardia Warsaw, Dinamo Tirana, Dynamo Berlin (East), Dynamo
Dresden), railroad or transport ministries (Lokomotiv Moscow, Lokomotiv Sofia,
Lok Stendal, Lech Poznań) or the communist party (FK Tirana). Ironically, some-
times the tensions within the communist apparatus were not less fierce than the
clashes on the pitch. The early 70s saw the increasingly powerful Stasi, the secret
police in the East Germany and the ever weaker position of the army, which forced
Vorwaerts Berlin to move to a less prestigious city of Frankfurt (Oder) in order to
make room for Dynamo.22 One should also not forget that some supporters claim
they were victimized as a group by the communist rule for resisting the regime
(Spartak Moscow, Lewski Sofia, Polonia Warsaw).
Football rivalries in the times of globalization
When moving to the postmodern era of the history of football, as described by
Giulianotti, we may notice that progressing globalization irreversibly changed the
perspective of approach towards football rivalries. The lines of sociopolitical
divisions which once delineated the axes of conflicts have become blurred, the
social fan base has changed, and following the shift towards the information society
many of the old oppositions have altered, as well as the essence of traditional com-
munities from which contemporary football originated. The television revolution,
the popularity of the Internet and the growing influence of the European club com-
petitions have created a wholly new type of a consumer-fan. Does this mean that
traditional football rivalries will fade for good? Currently, two prominent processes
that will probably determine the future shape of such rivalries may be observed.
The first one is glocalization, that is, adaptation of global aspects of football to
various local circumstances. As Giulianotti and Robertson write,
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Soccer & Society 11
in cultural terms, modern football affords a rich study of glocalization processes. The
game gives rise to a compelling relativization of social identities ( universalization of
particularism ) alongside concrete socio-political frameworks ( particularization of
universalism ). The construction of nostalgic discourses within football largely reflects
particular glocal responses to social change. (& ) The greater cosmopolitanism of
supporters and commentators, as assisted by the intensive global mediation of the
game s major news and key tournaments, serves to revitalize the relativization of
cultural identities in football. The game s business structures also display strong
degrees of glocality, as leading clubs in particular show marked cultural variations in
their systems of political association.23
In other words, glocalization means the emergence of new European football rival-
ries based on the post-national identities described by King in his mancunian case
study.24 According to this concept, the ever growing importance of international
club competitions will attract the attention of fans and media with conflicts derived
from completely new tensions. Some such symptoms may be already visible as
Manchester United over the last 10 years competed with Leeds United, its tradi-
tional enemy from the Roses Derby between Lancashire and Yorkshire, only five
times, whilst in the same period played four times against FC Barcelona and eight
times against Juventus Turin in 1995 2003.
However, there is also the second process, rooted into the tradition of Against
Modern Football , which involves defiance against the direction of football s
development in the twenty-first century and fight against detraditionalization. As
Duke predicts,
core and regular fans will continue to resist the disruption of their traditions, and will
vigorously oppose threats to the club name, ground or colours. Fans provide the conti-
nuity in the club s history, the shared memories and the family connections. A strong
loyalty to place persists in the late twentieth century, and football club support remains
for life albeit of the distant lapsed variety. It is the passionate commitment and loyalty
of core fans, which leads them to claim ownership of the club as the only real fans
and protectors of the club heritage. There are some who question the right of active
minorities to wield excessive influence, but this is exactly how party politics works.25
Conclusion
In this article, the author has examined the issue of club football rivalries which
stem from conflicting football identities built around different ethnic factors, such as
nationality, ethnic identity, language, religion, territory and origin. The term
football identity has been introduced, together with its definition and illustrations.
Furthermore, a general typology of European football rivalries based on sociopoliti-
cal and cultural factors has been proposed, with extended examples of cases which
have not been thoroughly presented to a wider public.
During the desk research, the author has identified two problematic issues: meth-
odology and the insufficient volume of in-depth research on particular football club
rivalries in Europe. Consequently, he has pinpointed the problem of the lack of
political perspective in such research and, as a result, formulated the question about
the need for establishing a related proper method of political science research. This
problem should be further examined in order to elaborate a universal research
method which could be applied to the entire methodology of researching political,
social and cultural backgrounds of conflicting football identities. The author has
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12 S. Dmowski
suggested that a more detailed study of this issue in Europe is needed, which would
yield a theoretical and substantial framework facilitating international comparative
research of the world of football rivalries.
Notes
1. Stone, The Role of Football in Everyday Life .
2. Benkwitz and Molnar, Interpreting and Exploring Football Fan Rivalries .
3. See, for example: Dunning, Murphy and Waddington, Anthropological versus Sociolog-
ical Approaches .
4. For the most important works of Leicester School see: Dunning et al. The Social Roots
of Football Hooliganism ; Dunning et al. Spectator Violence at Football Matches , Dun-
ning et al. The Roots of Football Hooliganism. For the critique of Leicester School see:
Armstrong, Football Hooligans; Bairner The Leicester School ; Dunning The Social
Roots of Football Hooliganism . See also: Spaaij, Understanding Football Hooliganism.
5. Armstrong and Giulianotti eds. Football Cultures and Identities; Stone, The Role of
Football in Everyday Life .
6. Hutchinson and Smith, Introduction, 6 7.
7. Armstrong and Giulianotti, Fear and Loathing: Introducing Global Football Opposi-
tions, 1 2.
8. Giulianotti, A Sociology of the Global Game, 10.
9. Benkwitz and Molnar, Interpreting and Exploring Football Fan Rivalries , 483 4.
10. Anderson, Imagined Communities.
11. Edensor, National Identity, 78 80.
12. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 142.
13. Giulianotti, A Sociology of the Global Game, 10.
14. For more about socio-political and cultural backgrounds of Spanish football, see: Ball,
Morbo.
15. Giulianotti, A Sociology of the Global Game, 10.
16. Tait, Kirkwall Ba Game.
17. See, for example: Riordan, Sport and International Politics; Riordan, The Impact of
Communism on Sport ; Mertin Ethnic Minorities ; Sudgen and Tomlinson, Football,
Ressentiment and Resistance .
18. See, for example: Mills, It All Ended in an Unsporting Way ; Dmowski and Szałański,
Globalna gra .
19. Aęcki, Śląski Ruch .
20. Giulianotti, A Sociology of the Global Game, 32 3.
21. Chandra, What is Ethnic Identity, 3.
22. Teichler, Fußball in der DDR.
23. Giulianotti and Robertson, Globalization of Football, 561.
24. King, Football Fandom.
25. Duke, Local Tradition versus Globalization, 19.
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