An Itinerant Mind

Some thoughts about football fans

Despite being English, my reaction to Sunday's football defeat was 'Oh dear, how sad, never mind.' Whilst I'm quite happy for others to enjoy it, football does nothing for me.

On Monday the news here was awash with the reaction to our failure to score penalties, and especially that some fans were expressing themselves racially. The England team Manager described the abuse as 'unforgivable'. One of the players, Harry Kane, is quoted as telling racist social media abusers "you're not an England fan and we don't want you".

Thinking about football fans, and indeed supporters of sports teams in general, it's not hard to conclude that they exhibit tribal behaviour. They enjoy their sense of belonging to a group, dressing in the appropriate colours, singing the anthems, shouting and chanting. Often they have a hatred of some rival team. This can in some instances express deeper roots than the sport itself, a well known example is the rivalry between Celtic, which has a strong Roman Catholic identity, and Rangers, who are largely Protestant Unionists in their identity.

Football fans often enjoy a strong sense of 'them and us', and some part of those that fanatically follow their team clearly exhibit other 'them and us' traits. Their frustration and misery at being defeated has been expressed inappropriately by fixating upon the colour of those who 'failed' them, and this is reprehensible, but also not at all surprising.