Carnival supporters, hooligans, and the ‘Against Modern Football’ movement: life within the ultras subculture in the Croatian context

Abstract

This paper is based on sociological research on Torcida, football supporters of Hajduk Football Club from Split (Croatia). We used ethnographic methodology throughout 37 months of fieldwork (from July 2012 to August 2015) and conducted 23 in-depth interviews with hardcore members of Torcida. Although our research included the distinction between carnival supporters and hooligans, these elements are much more interconnected within the hard core of Torcida than they are separate. Because of various social efforts (sometimes coordinated with other Ultras groups) against the local and global football establishment – especially against the Croatian Football Federation and UEFA – we consider Torcida part of a wide, heterogeneous social movement against modern football. This corresponds to the self-reflection and self-perception of the core group of Torcida. Ultras subculture in the Croatian context represents a key (although not the only) social actor in bearing the AMF movement.

Notes

1. The ‘Ultras tribe’ sounds just as good as ‘Ultras subculture’, and both terms are sociologically valid. However, reclaiming Maffesoli (1996) into the sociology of youth subcultures would demand more space than we have here. In short, our interpretation of the term ‘tribe’ as reintroduced by Michel Maffesoli (1996) is different than the usual interpretation found in the works of the post-subculturalists (Bennett 1999; Muggleton 2000, 2005), where inconsistency, fluidity, superficiality, and mutability are overemphasized while the consistent new structures of the postmodern tribe are often neglected. In spite of being based on the instinctive, the emotional, and the symbolic, as Maffesoli (1996) points out, these structures are nevertheless not devoid of firmness and power.

2. The dominant media discourse in Croatia presents Margaret Thatcher’s solution to football hooliganism as an example to be followed – ie similar laws and measures should be adopted and implemented to solve the problem. We dare to claim that media campaigns against Ultras and hooliganism are textbook examples of the sociological concept of moral panic.

3. For more on the construction of the official memory of Hajduk’s history, see Perasović and Mustapić (2014).

4. At the moment, out of 17 members of the CFF Executive Comitte (the ‘football government’), 11 are notable members of a political party, and the president and vice president of CFF are members of the same party. It has been a consistent occurrence for years that, whenever the Croatian Football Federation breaks the law, the actors involved explain to the media that they have been subjected to ‘political pressure’. In such cases, they seek (and receive) protection from umbrella organizations like FIFA and UEFA each time the state attempts to sanction their illegal behaviour.

5. It is important to note that the term ‘derby’ in Croatia refers to matches played between traditional rivals – such as a match between Dinamo and Hajduk – regardless of whether they are local clubs or not.

6. In order to stay anonymous, every one of our respondents chose a pseudonym. In this case, OSP is an acronym of the well-known phrase ‘o svom poslu’, which loosely translates as ‘doing our own thing’, connoting freedom and independence among football supporters.

7. The term ‘quoting’ here means the frequent use of photographs of this banner for academic presentations, book covers (Kennedy and Kennedy 2012), in the media etc. As our field research began long after 2008, the respondents, many of whom were active at the time, often mentioned this occasion.

8. This decision cost Hajduk the anger of a part of the public and the official penalty, but it also strengthened its connection to its supporters and drew attention to the deeper problems of Croatian football, such as corruption and autocratic rule of a single man and his followers. After the boycotted derby in Zagreb, Hajduk was upon coming home to Split greeted by 8000 fans that celebrated the gesture of the club. A week after, during the demonstration against CFF which gathered 30,000 people, the players and management of Hajduk showed their support by joining in.

9. In 2016 more than 43,000 supporters had joined Naš Hajduk.