Nobody doubts the presence of politics in football (how could it not be at the management level?), but nonetheless it's silly, imo, to assert that the support of one team or another is by definition political.

Whereas we think it's fundamentally silly to imagine "politics" as some separate sphere. It's a different way of thinking about stuff, innit.

It's more a realisation of the truism that "international football is a substitute for war" rather than any meaningful political statement. In some instances, such as Poland v Russia or Germany v Greece, the geopolitical reality may be more pressing, but if you take for instance, the Irish antipathy towards the English national team, that has become just a playful pantomime for most people, rather than a genuine commentary on the Normans, Cromwell, Thatcher etc. As for international supporters of Premier League teams, a socialist might construe that as implicit endorsement of globalisation, but hardly so if passed down through generations.

Brunislaw wrote:


If you're asking me, I'm not at all proposing that you as someone who likes good football is taking a political stance just because you want one nation to win over another.
That's got nothing to do with what I tried to say in my initial post, where I was against the claim so many sportigarchs make, that sport is sport and politics are politics, when I claim (without thinking I've invented the wheel or something), that sport on an international level is by definition politics.

Absent making plausible, non-trivial arguments about the real political ramifications of one act or another, "everything's political" is just a slogan.

If someone maintains that his support of a team is apolitical, the burden's on you to explain how it's not. I assume the best argument boils down to how one chooses to spend one's money, a line that leads very quickly into meaningless, abstract purism.

Well, no it isn't, unless you're being quite free with the words "is" and "by definition" and "politics."

I think we can all agree that international sports is capable of being more or less political. And the less the better.

Brunislaw wrote:


What's difficult to understand?
The fans are not a political movement, even though some or many can involve politics in their following, and it doesn't have to be permanent.
A national side in sports is political, period.

You're not Russian, but when that banner of theirs was on display, did you not get a bit turned off and maybe you didn't want Russia to go out because of it, but you felt you wouldn't cry if they did?
Maybe from being indifferent to Russia as a side in the EC, you turned slightly against them because of the banner?

Brunislaw wrote:


Yes, yes, and yes. More or less. Yes, it can be. But never not at all.

As I've said before, the Cardiff situation is a symptom of a much greater malaise in football that started with the formation of the EPL and the TV involvement which led to the Murdoch involvement which, of course, where politics come in.



Yes,I wouldn't disagree with that.

TonTon wrote:

Quite.