Background to the Research

• The link between football fandom and identity politics has been widely recognised. In exploring the relationship between football fans, their club and stadium in NI and Sweden, the authors assert that football fandom as a form of social cleavage is a complex issue and not unique to regions experiencing conflict.

Research Approach

• The authors use primary and secondary sources in order to examine the nature of the relationship between football support and identity among supporters of Linfield Football Club in NI and fans of AIK in Sweden.
  

Main Findings

Northern Ireland

• The organisation of sport in NI reflects and reinforces sectarian attitudes. Sporting venues are sites for the reproduction of a sense of alienation from the 'other' religion/culture and this is true for both Catholics and Protestants alike.
• Protestants feel unwelcome at certain soccer grounds such as Derry City's Brandywell, since the club resigned from NI's Irish League in 1972. Support for the club has been almost exclusively Catholic. Population shifts in North Belfast led to a decline in Protestant support for Cliftonville Football Club and a rise in Catholic support.
• Of the major clubs in the Irish League, Ballymena, Coleraine, Crusaders, Glenavon, Glentoran and Portadown are all mainly supported by Protestants, only Cliftonville has a predominantly Catholic following.
• The national team games are played at Windsor Park, which is situated beside the predominately Protestant Donegall Road and Village areas of Belfast. It is also the home ground of Linfield Football Club which has a vocal loyalist following.
• Catholics have also experienced difficulty in supporting the NI national team. Up until the end of the 1990s, many Catholics supported the national team and both Catholics and Protestants played for the team. Catholic support was forthcoming despite many Protestant supporters singing loyalist songs and wearing Linfield or Glasgow Rangers football shirts/scarves. After the 1990s, Catholic support began to decline partly due to the success of the Republic of Ireland team and partly due to the location of the national ground in a predominately Protestant area.
• Soccer and territory are particularly important to young Protestant males who may have experienced unemployment, feel socially marginalised, and have fears about the future of NI. For these individuals, football offers a context for the celebration of a wider culture.

Sweden

• Historically AIK had a exclusive and aristocratic following. In recent times, its following has incorporated large numbers of socially excluded young people. In 1981 the Black Army was founded as an AIK independent supporters club and its membership peaked in 1991-2 at 3,500. The Black Army gathers at the North Bank of the Rasunda Stadium where they sing songs and chant.
• AIK's stadium is located in Solna, a municipality situated in the north of the city of Stockhom, and the majority of AIK fans come from this area, which has become home to many immigrants. Some members of AIK express extreme right-wing political views and are hostile towards Sweden's large immigrant population.

Comparing fans in Sweden and Northern Ireland

• There is less evidence in Stockholm than in Belfast of the tightly knit form of segmental bonding usually associated with soccer hooliganism.
• In NI, the fans are protecting Protestant places and the imagined Ulster community. In Sweden, the Black Army view themselves as guardians of the Swedish people as a whole in the face of wider European and global change.
• Whilst the motives of these groups of soccer fans may vary between each country, both groups consist of mainly working class men who suffer, or perceive themselves to suffer, from relative deprivation. In each case, the responsibly for their situation lies with the 'other': Catholics in NI and immigrants in Sweden.
• In each location, soccer fans feel threatened by economic and social forces beyond their control, they gather in places where they feel able to exercise authority in terms of who can follow the team and what atmosphere the stadium will have. At the same time they feel that they are part of a broader movement of cultural resistance against 'the people' and 'the nation'.
• Exploration of soccer fandom in the two locations of NI and Sweden show that this phenomenon is not unique to deeply divided societies but it can be a feature of a society undergoing a degree of social dislocation.