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This is the first book to examine the growing movement of organised networks of LGBT+ football supporters, exploring activists' biographies and the meanings they ascribe to participation in identity politics-centred social movements. The book draws upon in-depth original research into the Pride in Football LGBT+ football supporters' network in the UK, alongside comparative material from other countries. It is also the first book to apply a cultural relational sociological framework to the study of football fans and supporters' groups, marking an important theoretical step forward that opens up new perspectives in the sociology of sport, the sociology of collective action and social movements, and the sociologies of genders and sexualities in the twenty-first-century world. As the struggle for cultural rights and recognition of LGBT+ communities continues, with football fandom providing an important site for understanding these issues given its historically embedded hegemonic masculine culture, and in the aftermath of gay male football player Jake Daniels' coming out' in May 2022, the book offers timely insights into new social movements, the consumption of sport, and the experiences of people from a diversity of sexualities. This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, football, fandom, gender, sexualities, social theory, or social movements.

For at least the past three decades, the sociology of football and its supporter cultures has been responsive to the social issues which have emerged within it. Today, the fact that fans rejoice and protest at overseas purchases of their club means that the time has come for research to reflect on elite-level English football's position in a transnational space. In this context, this article focuses on the football supporters' protests connected to Liverpool FC, centring on the Spirit of Shankly mobilization, and uses Manuel Castells' theories to understand them. The argument that emerges is important for sociologists understanding the contemporary world because it illustrates the connections between local sites around the world, the internet as a tool through which collective action takes place, and discusses what 'power' means in these contexts.

On 14 May 2008 Glasgow Rangers and Zenit St Petersburg contested the UEFA Cup final at the City of Manchester Stadium. Zenit St Petersburg won the match but the event was marred by violent clashes between Glasgow Rangers supporters and Greater Manchester Police's Tactical Support Group officers in Manchester city centre during the game. News coverage largely attached blame for the disorder upon Glasgow Rangers' supporters, however, this article, principally drawing upon participant observation material supported by other relevant literature, will argue that responsibility is diffuse across a number of constituencies and that Rangers fans alone should not be blamed for the degeneration of a 'fan party' into a 'hooligan riot'.

Racism in football has been the topic of much academic discussion. However, the issue of Islamophobic racism has received very little attention. This article looks at Middlesbrough FC and Newcastle United FC fan discussions around the 'Mido affair' in August 2007 to consider the issue and uses this evidence to discuss the effectiveness of the football Faith Summit's policy suggestions to combat Islamophobia in football. The unfolding argument is that Middlesbrough FC and Newcastle United FC both use 'open' and 'closed' Islamophobic positions opportunistically to express their feelings of rivalry toward each other and the emergent policy suggestions are that the football authorities should seek to work with football fans, rather than potentially punish them, in order to reduce anti-Muslim sentiment in spectator football.

This article presents e-zines as both a legitimate data source and a basis of investigation for sociologists of popular culture. To do this, the article describes and evaluates the rise of the "fanzine" in the 1970s and 1980s along with its decline in the final years of the 20th century and parallels this with the emergence of the Internet as an "everyday" commodity. The unfolding argument is that e-zines provide a site for both the construction of (collective and individual) identities and "information age" sports fan democracy.

It is well established that sport helps to produce and maintain national identities. However, the relationship between football and European identities has received only limited attention. This article questions whether football assists the production of European identities. To test this, data were collected from RAOTL e-zine (found at www.raotl.co.uk/), which is an Internet messageboard used by Liverpool Football Club supporters. From this data, a random sample consisting of 107 days of fan comments — collected over a 14-month period — was analysed using a frame analysis technique. The unfolding argument is that, in the sense of football competition, Liverpool supporters gave favourable narratives which related to UEFA club competition, which constituted a form of European identity and transnational fan experiences enchanted supporters' discourse.

Building on Della Porta's work on social movement events, critical junctures, and legacies, this article studies the discursive practices, emotions and networks of the instant 48-hour mobilizations of the anti-European Super League (ESL) movement in English football in April 2021. In doing so, we show how this case reveals a new generation of conflict between the different supporter demographic and corporate constituencies that characterize elite football in England, and their politicized temporal structures. Showing how social movement 'legacy' operates as a multifaceted concept of power and time, we argue that the 'puzzling out' of a new post-ESL regulatory regime in football reveals the tensions between what are considered legitimate, and illegitimate, practices, which characterize the moral economy of the contemporary English football crowd.

On May 15, 2016, reports emerged of a "suspect package" inside Old Trafford minutes before kick-off in Manchester United's game versus Bournemouth. The "suspect package," causing a full-scale evacuation, and match postponement, turned out to be a "fake bomb" accidently left following a security exercise. Minimal social research investigates responses from supporters to "security" and "safety" at large sports events. Although the "suspect package," fortunately, never "materialized," it represents an important case in English football. Theoretically, this study adopts a frame analysis technique pioneered by Erving Goffman and it empirically examines supporters' responses to security during the chaotic hours of the "fake bomb" incident, as articulated on an interactive message board. Overall, supporters were satisfied with police and security management's handling of the incident, although it was questioned how the "fake bomb" was not detected. Importantly, supporters agreed that "safety comes first."

Recent debates in sociology consider how Internet communications might catalyse leaderless, open-ended, affective social movements that broaden support and bypass traditional institutional channels to create change. We extend this work into the field of leisure and lifestyle politics with an empirical study of Internet-mediated protest movement, Stand Against Modern Football. We explain how social media facilitate communications that transcend longstanding rivalries, and engender shared affective frames that unite diverse groups against corporate logics. In examining grassroots organisation, communication and protest actions that span online and urban locations, we discover sustained interconnectedness with traditional social movements, political parties, the media and the corporate targets of protests. Finally, we suggest that Internet-based social movements establish stable forms of organisation and leadership at these networked intersections in order to advance instrumental programmes of change.