But there’s more too. Fans can be excessive. They can cause trouble. There’s obviously a physical fear factor involved in not telling a 6ft brick-shithouse of a fan to stop their offensive behaviour, but to this fear we can add the fact that the brick-shithouse is seen by all and sundry as a real fan. They get behind the team. They stick it to the opposition – literally.
Fandom based around the real fan is ultimately a game of one upmanship. which tends to excess, tends to outrageous acts of ‘loyalty’. Football isn’t inherently a game that attracts violence and offence from its followers, but a culture of valorising the real fan makes it harder to truly oppose a club’s firm. The nadir – ultras in Argentina and Italy, well known for violence and racism tacitly supported by the club’s themselves, given free tickets. Clubs in England refusing to ban people for racist chanting because they’re well known members of the ‘hardcore’ – AKA, the best customers. A better definition of what being a fan is would help. It wouldn’t solve the problems, but redrawing the boundaries to exclude the violent and ostracise them would be a help.
There is a kind of nationalism that can work positively; an inclusive nationalism, which sees the nation not as trans-historical and metaphysical, but simply the place where we live. Recognising the value of communities, and the value of collective action, it seeks to include rather than exclude; it’s a nationalism of the future, not the past; where are we going, not where we’ve come from. The price of entry is a commitment to being here right now; of not opting out of caring.
The same is eminently true of football clubs. It’s not about where you came from, or what team you’ve supported in the past. It’s about what you do now, and what you want to happen in the future. Like the team and are gutted if they lose? Welcome aboard. Want to start a fight to prove how much of a real fan and real man you are? Kindly fuck off and don’t come back.
If that’s not you, then welcome to Freaky Trigger’s sports coverage. There will not be boring monologues of limited interest. There will not be a ‘rockist’ approach to sport. There will not be a debate about whether Darts is a sport or not. You might want to discuss it though, and hopefully, you will. There are only three house rules. You love sport, or at least like it. Being here is enough. You must also have a brain and be eclectic and prepared to accept that a sport you thought was useless was in fact far, far more interesting after reading one of the pieces. And finally, please leave your dick at the door.