Soccer vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics

by Gabriel Kuhn, Boff Whalley (Foreword by)

Overview

Soccer has turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry. Professionalism and commercialization dominate its global image. Yet the game retains a rebellious side, maybe more so than any other sport co-opted by moneymakers and corrupt politicians. From its roots in working-class England to political protests by players and fans, and a current radical soccer underground, the notion of football as the “people’s game” has been kept alive by numerous individuals, teams, and communities.

This book not only traces this history but also reflects on common criticisms—that soccer ferments nationalism, serves right-wing powers, and fosters competitiveness—exploring alternative perspectives and practical examples of egalitarian DIY soccer. Soccer vs. the State serves both as an orientation for the politically conscious football supporter and as an inspiration for those who try to pursue the love of the game away from televisions and big stadiums, bringing it to back alleys and muddy pastures.

This second edition has been expanded to cover events of recent years, including the involvement of soccer fans in the Middle Eastern uprisings of 2011–2013, the FIFA scandal of 2015, and the 2017 strike by the Danish women’s team.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629635729
Publisher:	PM Press
Publication date:	02/01/2019
Edition description:	Second edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Gabriel Kuhn is an Austrian-born writer and translator living in Sweden. He is a former semi-professional soccer player and has been active in social movements since the late 1980s. Among his book publications are Playing as If the World Mattered: An Illustrated History of Activism in Sports (2015) and Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety: Forging a Militant Working-Class Culture (2017).

Boff Whalley is an English musician, writer, and athlete, who is perhaps best known for being the former lead guitarist for the anarcho-punk and folk band Chumbawamba. He is now a playwright and the founder of Commoners Choir, who released their first album in 2017.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

History: Truths and Myths about Football as a Working-Class Sport

Radical football fans like to portray the game as a traditional working-class sport. This is true in certain ways, and false in others.

Soccer historians have cited evidence of football-like games in many cultures. Apparently, such games have been played among Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, and Vikings as well as in ancient Chinese and Japanese societies. This book's focus, however, is the modern-day game of association football, as it was established in England in the 1860s.

Football games in England date back at least 800 years. They have been described as "slightly structured battles between the youth of neighbouring villages and towns," with an unlimited number of players, no set time, and no referees. The games were played "for settling old scores, land disputes, and engaging in 'manly,' tribal aggression. "Apparently, some of them could go on for days. Even though the ball is generally referred to as "a leather-bound inflated pig's bladder" some historians suggest that enemies' skulls were used as well.

Traditional English football games were people's events, attracting large and excited crowds, which, in their "unruliness," offended Puritan principles, worried political authorities, and upset merchants who lost profit. "As early as the 14th century there were calls for controls on the game. These stemmed not so much from moral disquiet about the violent consequences of football but from the fact that, by driving ordinary citizens away from the market towns on match days, it was bad for business."

The royals had other concerns. Supposedly, King Edward III of England banned the game in 1349 because it kept his bowmen from practicing their archery skills. Numerous legal attempts were made at suppressing the game over the centuries — all to no avail.

In the 19th century, a much more effective way of "taming the game" was found: football was incorporated into the public school system. This was a reflection of industrialization and urbanization, which had eradicated many areas where the traditional games had been played, and of new mechanisms of social control.

Once the game had entered public schools, it was increasingly regulated. But football remained a fairly violent sport for some time. According to one report, "the enemy tripped, shinned, charged with the shoulder, got you down and sat upon you ... in fact might do anything short of murder to get the ball from you." "Weak" boys suffered bullying from their stronger peers, and scores were settled between "rough" working-class and "soft" middle-class kids, whose parents began to worry about their safety.

In 1828, Dr. Thomas Arnold, headmaster at the School of Rugby (yes, that's where the name derives from) cast a first set of rules to "pacify" football. In the words of a group of football historians, "the real violence on the football field was ritualized by regulation." Football became a sport to keep working-class youth out of trouble and to instill gentleman-like qualities in the players. Even the churches started to embrace the game, hoping that it would keep youths from drinking and idling.

The Rugby regulations found wide acceptance, yet interpretations varied from school to school for some decades. With the desire for increased inter-school contests came finally the wish for a commonly accepted book of rules. In 1863, representatives of ten schools and one football club met at the Freemason's Tavern in London to discuss the most disputed aspects of the game: shin-kicking, tripping, and carrying the ball. After weeks of discussion, traditionalists split from reformists. The former eventually founded the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The latter founded the first Football Association (FA) on October 26, 1863. This marks the beginning of the modern-day game of football — or "soccer," a variation of "association" — although it would take another six years to create the distinct position of the goalkeeper, to ban any handling of the ball for outfield players, and to reduce the number of players to eleven. By 1871, the game had pretty much taken on the form that characterizes it to this day.

The same year, the FA's club membership reached fifty and the first FA Cup, the world's oldest football competition, was played, the Wanderers FC beating the Royal Engineers AFC 1-0 in the final. 1872 saw the first international encounter between England and Scotland, a 0-0 draw. Scotland was represented by its oldest club, Queen's Park. The Scottish FA was founded in 1873, that of Wales in 1875, and that of Ireland in 1880.

Scholars have argued that the 19th-century regulation of the game reflected the emergence of bourgeois-capitalist society: prescribing the number of players and the size of the field has been linked to the standardization of measuring size and weight for economic interests; the league's tables have been compared to the demands of bookkeeping; stipulating the time of play has been tied to the rigorous supervision of working hours. There probably lies some truth in these claims, yet they hardly discredit the game as a mere capitalist invention. Commonly accepted rules are prerequisites for games to spread globally, which creates enormous potential for international community building. Besides, soccer might be framed by a number of regulations, yet they are simple and few and leave plenty of space for creative innovation — one of the game's most beautiful aspects.

The class character of football changed in the late 19th century. When the game was being tamed, football was predominantly played by the middle and upper classes; as one Marxist paper puts it, "by young men whose future careers were as bankers, captains of industry or administrators of empire." Through the introduction of professional teams in the 1880s, however, football became increasingly attractive for workers. Middle-class and upper-class folks played football for recreation, but their professional ambitions lay elsewhere. For working-class folks, however, playing football professionally became a tempting alternative to toiling in a factory. While the middle and upper classes arrogantly snubbed the professionalization of the game, the working classes embraced it as an early form of social ascent.

The prominence of working-class players in the professional game also had an effect on the spectators, who wanted to see their mates play. Football became the favorite pastime of the working classes, while rugby was the preferred football game among the middle and upper classes, still embracing ideals of "noble amateurism."

Blackburn Olympic counts as the first working-class team to win the FA Cup in 1883, a time that saw some of England's biggest clubs emerge with working-class rosters: the Arsenal team was formed by workers from the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, West Ham United by workers from Thames Ironworks, Manchester United by Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway workers, and Southampton FC by workers from the Woolston shipyard.

However, although the players in these clubs were workers who attracted a largely working-class audience, the teams were founded, financed, and administered by capitalist industry. This means that from its beginnings as a professional enterprise, football was economically and politically dependent on and controlled by the middle and upper classes.

It was not only factory workers who founded clubs, but also churches. Even if their interest was less economic, the intention was to oversee the workers' leisure activities. Many of England's most prominent clubs were founded on this basis: Aston Villa emerged from a Birmingham bible class, Birmingham City from the Holy Trinity Church, Everton from Liverpool's St. Domingo's Congregational Church Sunday School, and the Bolton Wanderers from the Christ Church in the city's Egerton neighborhood.

The first soccer league was formed in England in 1888 by William McGregor, a Scottish shopkeeper and the chairman of Aston Villa. The development that football took was not to the liking of the defenders of Victorian conservatism. The festival character of working-class soccer matches seemed to recall the atmosphere at traditional inter-village football games. The upper classes saw soccer as an excuse for "rowdy" folks to gather and hence as a threat to the public order. These fears reinforced the image of soccer as a working-class sport.

The early game's class character was the same almost everywhere it spread. In the context of the British Empire, it is interesting to note that wherever the British ruled — South Asia, South Africa, Australia/New Zealand — rugby and cricket were groomed as dominant sports; wherever British workers ventured — first and foremost Continental Europe and South America — it was soccer that had a much bigger impact.

On the European continent, soccer arrived early. The Netherlands and Denmark founded national football associations as early as 1889, with Switzerland, Belgium, and Italy following shortly after. In 1900, football made its first appearance at the Olympics as a demonstration sport; it was included as an official event by 1908.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), today arguably one of the most powerful organizations in the world, was founded in Paris in 1904 by seven members: France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Germany cabled its intention to join the same day.

Political controversies were a big factor in FIFA from its inception. In 1908, Austria successfully objected to the membership of Bohemia and Hungary on the grounds that these were Austrian territories. Why Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland were still allowed as independent FIFA members was never explained to any satisfaction.

The British associations had joined FIFA a year after its foundation but were not very active in the organization. The motive was thinly veiled snobbery: British football officials saw their teams above all other football-playing nations.

From 1919 to 1946, the British associations basically boycotted FIFA, officially to avoid organizing with World War I enemies. In light of this, it becomes understandable why the 0-1 loss to the United States at England's first-ever World Cup appearance in 1950 marks one of the very special moments in football history.

In its beginnings, football was predominantly a men's sport, but not exclusively so. Women had participated in British village football games, but were excluded from the sport when it became restricted to boys' schools in the 1800s. When club football became popular in the late 19th century, however, women soon formed their own teams.

The first organized matches took place in the 1890s, and women's football became highly popular. During World War I, with the majority of male players at the front, women's games were scheduled regularly, often advertised as charities to raise money for the war. The popularity continued after the war's end.

The most popular of the women's teams were the Dick, Kerr's Ladies, founded in 1917 by W.B. Dick and John Kerr, Scottish factory owners in Preston, England. In 1920, on Boxing Day, the Dick, Kerr's Ladies beat their closest rival, St. Helen's Ladies, 4-0 at Goodison Park in Liverpool in front of 53,000 people, still a record for women's games in England. Regular attendance at men's games was much lower at the time.

The game set off alarm bells at the headquarters of the English FA, which began to perceive women's football as a serious threat to the men's game. In a scandalous move, the English FA banned women's football from all FA grounds in 1921, which effectively meant an end to organized women's football. The explanation given was that "football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged."

The Dick, Kerr's Ladies made headlines one more time when they toured the United States in 1922. They played some of the country's best men's sides and won three out of seven games.

The English FA's ban of women's football, replicated by some other national football associations, also hindered its international expansion. There exist hardly any records of organized women's football between 1920 and 1970. This allowed football to develop its staunchly male character, also on the terraces. While women reportedly attended football games at the beginning of the 20th century in fair numbers, there were hardly any female spectators left by the 1930s and the few women who defied their de facto exclusion were considered to "invade male territory."

The English FA ban on women's soccer was eventually lifted in 1971. The only notable football nation that kept a longer ban was Paraguay, where women were prohibited from organized football until 1979.

Soccer had reached South America almost as early as Continental Europe. Argentina had its own Football Association by 1893, Chile two years later, and Uruguay by 1900. The Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (CONMEBOL) was founded in 1916. By 1920, fútbol rioplatense, the soccer played in Uruguay and Argentina, had become a worldwide sensation. Uruguay dominated the Olympic football tournaments of 1924 and 1928, and the fútbol rioplatense was regarded the best in the world — at least by everyone but the English who remained convinced of their own game's superiority.

The sociocultural development of football in South America was similar to the one in Europe. The first clubs were mostly founded by expatriates, but the sport was fast embraced by the working classes. In the early 20th century, there were probably more clubs founded by workers themselves than in Europe. However, as Maurice Biriotti del Burgo explains, those in power soon tried to take control:

In the early years of the century, many old-style establishments — not only football clubs but also factory management boards and the like — representatives of Latin America's elite, made attempts to form relationships with working-class teams. At times this took the form of patronage, with an established club funding an affiliated local team. At other times, it took on other dimensions — managers encouraging the creation of football sides among the workers to engender company loyalty and, perhaps more importantly, to divert employees' attentions away from the more damaging spectre of industrial unrest. In these early relationships formed between the elite and the masses in football, can be seen the origins of one of the most compelling arguments in the analysis of football in Latin America: that football serves as an opiate of the masses, an instrument of mass control, a social adhesive binding the most volatile and precarious of ethnic and political mixes.

The "opiate of the masses" argument was widespread among early-20th-century socialists both in Europe and in South America. Football was seen as a distraction from the political struggle, as a means by the powerful to keep the workers complacent, as a potential tool for nationalism, as a formula to pit workers against workers in competition, and as a way to create stars, thereby undermining workers' solidarity.

However, many socialists soon realized that football was becoming an integral part of working-class culture and they reacted. In the 1920s, a number of socialist football clubs were founded. The idea was to place the game in a sound ideological environment, but also to use it to strengthen socialist and collective values. These developments were particularly strong in Argentina.

The German-speaking world saw an interesting development in football in the 1920s and early 1930s, when workers-only clubs were founded. From 1920 to 1933, Germany brandished its own workers' league. It was organized by the socialist Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund [Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Association] (ATSB), alongside the official league of the German FA. This was a unique endeavor in football history. The ATSB was dissolved by the Nazis in 1933.

The Nazis also eradicated the strong Jewish influence on European soccer. Walther Bensemann was not only involved in the foundation of Eintracht Frankfurt and Karlsruher SC but also founded Kicker, the most popular German soccer journal to date. Notable clubs with strong Jewish roots are Racing Club de Paris, Bayern Munich, Ajax Amsterdam, Austria Vienna, and MTK Budapest.

In Austria and Hungary, the Jewish influence on soccer was particularly strong. While Hungary's national team often fielded a majority of Jewish players, an all-Jewish club, Hakoah Vienna, won the Austrian Championship in 1925. Hakoah was also the first team to beat an English side in England when they routed West Ham United 5-1 in 1923. Noteworthy anecdotes from the team's history include the 1925 Vienna Championship Final, in which goalkeeper Alexander Fabian broke his arm and — substitutions not being allowed at the time — swapped position with a forward only to secure Hakoah's win by scoring the decisive goal.

In 1926, Hakoah embarked on a very successful tour of the United States, playing in front of record-breaking crowds. A May 1, 1926, game at the polo grounds in New York City attracted a crowd of 46,000 — a U.S. record for soccer games until 1977, when the Pelé-led New York Cosmos attracted crowds of over 70,000.

A few Hakoah players stayed in the United States, partly due to the relative lack of anti-Semitism, partly due to financial lure: Hakoah's most prominent player, the Hungarian Béla Guttmann, was contracted by the New York Giants.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition vii

Foreword Boff Whalley 7

Introduction 9

History: Truths and Myths about Football as a Working-Class Sport 13

Radical Debates on Football

Football and Politics 51

Football's Role as an "Opiate of the Masses" 57

Nationalism and Sectarianism 59

Fan Violence 65

The Commercialization of the Game and the "New Football Economy" 70

Bigotry in Football Culture 93

Radical Interventions in the Professional Game

A Stage for Protests 105

Social Justice Campaigns 108

Personalities 109

Teams 132

Supporters 143

Clubs as Cooperatives, Not as Corporations 177

Alternative Football Culture

Grassroots and Underground Football Culture 183

Football for Radicals 226

Conclusion 238

Extra Time: Appendix to the Second Edition

Ultras in Middle East Uprisings; 2011-2013 239

Protest, Intervention, Change: Activism in Soccer 247

The FIFA Scandal of 2015 258

Keeping It Real: Alternative Football Cont. 267

Challenging Male Dominance One Strike at a Time: The Women's Soccer Rebellion 277

Reflections and Outlook: Three Interviews 284

Resources 306

Notes 321

Images 325

Inserts 329

About the author 333

What People are Saying About This

Gerd Dembowski

Gabriel Kuhn illustrates compellingly how many radicals use soccer as a cathartic gas station, and how they integrate the game into their political beliefs and struggles. (Gerd Dembowski, Football against Racism in Europe)

Christophe Huette

Commendable research, humour aplenty and an intelligent presentation of how the game's been almost totally stolen by profiteers of all types. (Christophe Huette, translator and Olympique de Marseille)

Minobu

I was greatly encouraged by this work. It provided me with alternative ways to play, enjoy, and talk about football, leaving behind nationalism and the exclusiveness of elite athletes. . . .Unite the world through football, and reclaim sports! (Minobu, Rage Football Collective (RFC), Japan)

Editorial Reviews

"Kuhn is impressive in his global and historical scope, and in acknowledging gender and sexuality questions as well as those of class and race, as he looks at issues ranging from the exploitation of African players to the way the World Cup has been abused politically." —When Saturday Comes (September 2011)


"Alright, good soul of football, now you have your own classic. . . . Soccer vs. the State reaches so far beyond the limits of mainstream left-wing football discourse that its purchase is no less than a must." —11 Freunde (May 28, 2011)


"One has to be a cynic not to be touched by many of the heart-warming stories in the book. Sometimes football does indeed stand for freedom, equality, and togetherness." —Offside magazine

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