Fear and Loathing in World Football Gary Armstrong Richard Giulianotti BERG Fear and Loathing in World Football Global Sport Cultures Eds. Gary Armstrong, Brunel University, Richard Giulianotti, University of Aberdeen, and David Andrews, The University of Memphis From the Olympics and the World Cup to eXtreme sports and kabbadi, the social significance of sport at both global and local levels has become increasingly clear in recent years. The contested nature of identity is widely addressed in the social sciences, but sport as a particularly revealing site of such contestation, in both industrializing and post-industrial nations, has been less fruitfully explored. Further, sport and sporting corporations are increasingly powerful players in the world economy. Sport is now central to the social and technological development of mass media, notably in telecommunications and digital television. It is also a crucial medium through which specific populations and political elites communicate and interact with each other on a global stage. Berg Publishers are pleased to announce a new book series that will examine and evaluate the role of sport in the contemporary world. Truly global in scope, the series seeks to adopt a grounded, constructively critical stance towards prior work within sport studies and to answer such questions as: • How are sports experienced and practiced at the everyday level within local settings? • How do specific cultures construct and negotiate forms of social stratification (such as gender, class, ethnicity) within sporting contexts? • What is the impact of mediation and corporate globalization upon local sports cultures? Determinedly interdisciplinary, the series will nevertheless privilege anthropological, historical and sociological approaches, but will consider submissions from cultural studies, economics, geography, human kinetics, international relations, law, philosophy and political science. The series is particularly committed to research that draws upon primary source materials or ethnographic fieldwork. Fear and Loathing in World Football Edited by Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti GLOBAL SPORT CULTURES Oxford • New York First published in 2001 by Berg Editorial Offices: 150 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JJ, UK 838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 1003-4812 USA © Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of Berg. Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing-in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85973 458 8 (Cloth) ISBN 1 85973 463 4 (Paper) Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants. Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn. Contents Acknowledgements ix Notes on the Contributors xi Introduction Fear and Loathing: Introducing Global Football Oppositions 1 Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti Part I The Break-Up of Britain: Power and Defiance in Football 1 Can’t Live With Them. Can’t Live Without Them: Reflections on Manchester United Carlton Brick 9 2 Cruel Britannia? Glasgow Rangers, Scotland and ‘Hot’ Football Rivalries Richard Giulianotti and Michael Gerrard 23 3 Real and Imagined: Reflections on Football Rivalry in Northern Ireland Alan Bairner and Peter Shirlow 43 4 The Lion Roars: Myth, Identity and Millwall Fandom Garry Robson 61 Part II Fighting for Causes: Core Identities and Football Oppositions 5 ‘Those Bloody Croatians’: Croatian Soccer Teams, Ethnicity and Violence in Australia, 1950–99 Roy Hay 77 6 Football, Ethnicity and Identity in Mauritius: Soccer in a Rainbow Nation Tim Edensor and Frederic Augustin 91 v 7 ‘Team Loyalty Splits the City into Two’: Football, Ethnicity and Rivalry in Calcutta Paul Dimeo 105 8 Basque Football Rivalries in the Twentieth Century John Walton 119 Part III Fragmentary Nationality: Civic Identities and Football Oppositions 9 Players, Patrons and Politicians: Oppositional Cultures in Maltese Football Gary Armstrong and Jon P. Mitchell 137 10 Viking and Farmer Armies: The Stavanger-Bryne Norwegian Football Rivalry Hans Hognestad 159 11 Competition and Cooperation: Football Rivalries in Yemen Thomas B. Stevenson and Abdul Karim Alaug 173 12 ‘The Colours Make Me Sick’: America FC and Upward Mobility in Mexico Roger Magazine 187 13 Three Confrontations and a Coda: Juventus of Turin and Italy Patrick Hazard and David Gould 199 Part IV The Others Abroad: Modernity and Identity in Club Rivalries 14 Olympic Mvolyé: The Cameroonian Team that Could Not Win Bea Vidacs 223 15 Treacheries and Traditions in Argentinian Football Styles: The Story of Estudiantes de La Plata Pablo Alabarces, Ramiro Coelho and Juan Sanguinetti 237 16 Ferencváros, Hungary and the European Champions League: The Symbolic Construction of Marginality and Exclusion János Bali 251 Contents vi 7 ‘Team Loyalty Splits the City into Two’: Football, Ethnicity and Rivalry in Calcutta Paul Dimeo 105 8 Basque Football Rivalries in the Twentieth Century John Walton 119 Part III Fragmentary Nationality: Civic Identities and Football Oppositions 9 Players, Patrons and Politicians: Oppositional Cultures in Maltese Football Gary Armstrong and Jon P. Mitchell 137 10 Viking and Farmer Armies: The Stavanger-Bryne Norwegian Football Rivalry Hans Hognestad 159 11 Competition and Cooperation: Football Rivalries in Yemen Thomas B. Stevenson and Abdul Karim Alaug 173 12 ‘The Colours Make Me Sick’: America FC and Upward Mobility in Mexico Roger Magazine 187 13 Three Confrontations and a Coda: Juventus of Turin and Italy Patrick Hazard and David Gould 199 Part IV The Others Abroad: Modernity and Identity in Club Rivalries 14 Olympic Mvolyé: The Cameroonian Team that Could Not Win Bea Vidacs 223 15 Treacheries and Traditions in Argentinian Football Styles: The Story of Estudiantes de La Plata Pablo Alabarces, Ramiro Coelho and Juan Sanguinetti 237 16 Ferencváros, Hungary and the European Champions League: The Symbolic Construction of Marginality and Exclusion János Bali 251 Contents vi This Page Intentionally Left Blank Acknowledgements Invaluable assistance in the completion of this book has been provided by the following people to whom we are greatly indebted: Gerry Finn, Andrew Blakie, Tony Mangan, Eduardo Archetti, Matti Goksoyr, Rosemary Harris and David Russell. Sincere thanks for their secretarial skills are due to Sally Scott, Alison Moir and Karen Kinnaird. For a meticulous proof reading we thank Keith Povey. Our thanks are especially due to those who commissioned and assisted in the production of this work at Berg publishing, particularly Kathryn Earle, Katie Joice, Sara Everett, and Paul Millicheap. Last but not least we thank our partners Hani Armstrong and Donna McGilvray for their patience and support throughout the duration of this work. ix [...]... findings from the football culture in India Dimeo examines the communal politics that underpin football rivalries in Calcutta, notably involving Mohammedan Sporting Club and the Hindu East Bengal club arguing that football in the sub-continent thus possesses rather paradoxical properties, by serving to unify people while also dividing them John Walton examines the complex dynamics surrounding the rivalries... fixtures were played, beginning with the annual fixture between Scotland and England in 1872 A similar process occurred overseas, as the game spread through Europe, South America and other British trading centres A strong rivalry continued to exist between local teams and the various patrician British clubs that had introduced and cultivated football in new lands The football world continues to be strongly... tourism and identities in San Sebastian and the Basque Country He has also worked on, among other things; Lancashire, the social history of fish and chips and English seaside resorts, especially Blackpool His most recent books are Blackpool, (1998), and The British Seaside: Holidays and Resorts in the Twentieth Century (2000) xiv Introduction Introduction Fear and Loathing: Introducing Global Football. .. Children and Soccer Fans in Mexico City Jon P Mitchell trained in Social Anthropology at Sussex and Edinburgh Universities and since 1997 has been lecturer in Social Anthropology in the School of Cultural and Community Studies, University of Sussex His doctoral research was based in Malta, and covered issues of national and local identity, ritual and religion, history, memory and the public sphere Since... Oppositions Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti The history of football is the 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 During the Middle Ages, the various European forms of football were often violent affairs involving rival social groups... expressed in increasingly fractious ways The significance of the ‘anti-Man U’ phenomenon lies in its cultural dominance as a means by which problematics within contemporary football are understood, evaluated, expressed and contested Within the increasingly complex political and cultural interrelationships between the local and the global, Manchester United assume the role of a kind of cultural interface... (1998) Recent work includes articles on walking in the countryside and in the city, and an edited book, Reclaiming Stoke-on-Trent: Leisure, Space and Identity in the Potteries (2000) He is currently working on a book titled National Identities and Popular Culture Mike Gerrard is a teaching assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland As an undergraduate and postgraduate... senses of difference and rivalry In their most extreme manifestation, the enactment of these rivalries through football can be linked closely to inter-communal violence, such as between Serbs and Croatians (in the former Yugoslavia or among émigrés in Australia), Catholics and Protestants (in Northern Ireland or Scotland), or Hondurans and Salvadoreans (as in the ‘soccer war’ of 1969).1 In more prosaic... ‘Fighting for Causes: Core Identities and Football Oppositions’ Here, we examine four non-Anglo-Saxon rivalries that develop issues initially raised within the Rangers and Linfield cases, and which centre upon sub-national and religious antagonisms In all of these cases, violence has been one key resource in negotiating relations 3 Introduction between the minority groups and the majority communities Roy... University, England He has written Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score (1998), Blade Runners: Lives in Football (1998), and has co-edited (with Richard Giulianotti) Entering The Field: New Perspectives on World Football (1997) and Football Cultures and Identities (1999) Frederic Augustin is a social worker and a former social science student at the University of Mauritius Alan Bairner is a Professor in Sports . Fear and Loathing in World Football Gary Armstrong Richard Giulianotti BERG Fear and Loathing in World Football Global Sport Cultures Eds that underpin football rivalries in Calcutta, notably involving Mohammedan Sporting Club and the Hindu East Bengal club arguing that football in the sub-continent