Football against fascism ft Chris Lee

Football has been used by both politicians as well as fans to advance their own interests. How have fascist and right-wing political leaders and regimes exploited football to promote themselves? And how have fans tried to fight right wing authoritarianism through football?  In this episode co-hosts Francesco and Guy talk to Chris Lee, author of The Defiant: A History of Football Against Fascism and host of website and podcast Outside Write. Chris discusses the relationship between the beautiful game and political ideologies before, during and after the Second World War while also looking at the space football has provided to express opposition towards right-wing regimes across Europe and South America.  

Transcript

Football Against Fascism ft Chris Lee

Guy Burton 00:08

Good morning and welcome to another edition of the FootPol Podcast, the podcast where football meets politics. And I'm one of your co -hosts, Guy Burton, and I'm joined by by other co -hosts, Francesco Belcastro in London. How are you doing Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:22

I'm fine, Guy. How are you? 

Guy Burton 00:23

I'm doing very well, thanks. You know what we're going to be talking about today, don't you? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:26

I'm particularly excited about today's episode and I say it every week, but this week I'm actually really, really excited. 

Guy Burton 00:32

Yes, exactly. So this week we're going to be talking about the relationship between fascism and football, aren't we? We're going to be looking at how fascism, the ideas have been used or sort of the actors, you know, political leaders, you know, before and after the Second World War, you know, have tried to use and exploit football, but also we're going to be, I think, in a way, looking at how football has been or fascists and fascism has been challenged by those in football, whether it's by the players themselves, by fans. 

Guy Burton 01:03

And so that's going to make a really interesting... 

Francesco Belcastro 01:04

Can I clarify, that's the part I like, right? 

Guy Burton 01:06

Yeah, exactly. Francesco is not a right -wing person by any stretch of the imagination. So yeah, so we're quite... So I think both of us actually are pretty interested in this, the, you know, the element of resistance that football took towards these, because I think we also know quite a lot about... We've seen, you know, how political leaders and politicians try and use football. 

Guy Burton 01:28

So it's how others have tried to challenge all of that. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:30

And we have had quite a left -wing club on the podcast a few weeks ago, well, a couple months ago now.

Guy Burton 01:37

 That is true. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:38

Club in Clapton Community. 

Guy Burton 01:40

And joining us today to talk about this relationship between fascism and football and the resistance towards it is the person who has written the book on it, which is Chris Lee, who is the editor of Outside Write, Write as in W -R -I -T -E, a blogcast and podcast that joins... 

Guy Burton 01:58

That explores the relationship between football and culture. He does this as a side show, but because he runs a content and copywriting company, Eight Moon Media, but his writing has appeared in various publications over the years, including Football Weekends, The Gentleman Ultra, and Halb Vier. 

Guy Burton 02:14

He's also written two books, the first one which was Origin Stories, The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World, and that was published in 2021, and the one we're going to talk about today, The Defiant, A History of Football Against Fascism, which came out in October 2022, and I believe it was with Pitch Publishing. 

Guy Burton 02:31

Anyway, Chris, welcome to the show. 

Chris Lee 02:33

Thank you for having me on. Can't wait to get in. 

Guy Burton 02:36

Your details say that you are a bit of a football agnostic these days, and a kind of a lapsed QPR fan. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that and why? 

Chris Lee 02:46

Yeah, lapsed Queens Park Rangers supporter to be honest. I kind of grew up in a non -footballing area where you're stuck between clubs, so you went to school, your kids had to support Arsenal, Spurs, Man U, Liverpool, all those sort of... 

Chris Lee 03:00

you know, standard things in the 80s. I guess the nearest club we used to go to was Brighton and Hove Albion down on the South Coast when they were at the Goldstone ground. So I do keep an eye on Brighton scores still and go to the AmEx every so often, but I wouldn't call myself a fan. 

Chris Lee 03:13

I like QPR because of the colours in the kit. No connection with West London, more East and South, but the I would, I just like the kit, I like the name and I kind of went off them in the early 21st century when they kind of rebranded and it all, you know, there was a lot of boardroom going ons there and now they've gone back to the crest that I kind of grew up with. 

Chris Lee 03:33

I got more comfortable with it. So, yeah, I mean, it's great, but I don't go very often. I took a Norwegian friend there earlier at the start of the season, a couple other people, their first experience at Loftus Road, and it's always a good atmosphere. 

Chris Lee 03:44

I do like it there, but often you leave disappointed. 

Guy Burton 03:47

Well, as an Aldershot fan, I know that feeling very well, although this season we're doing pretty well. But can I just ask, because I think also part of the reason you're agnostic as well is because of the nature of your blog and podcast, Outside Write? 

Guy Burton 04:01

So can we just start a little bit by talking about what Outside Write is all about and how you got started with it? 

Chris Lee 04:08

Yeah, I mean, it came about about 2015. I mean, basically, if I go back to the 90s, when I was late 90s, when I was student, a Rasmus student, when one could do that thing, we went, I went to Madrid, and I did my dissertation on Spanish regional identity and politics, which was, I managed to convince my tutors to let me do that, and politics in Spain and football was a thing, whereas here it's not so much in England, maybe a little bit in Scotland, but not much in England. 

Chris Lee 04:37

And I did one about Spanish regional identity, and obviously the case study there was Madrid Barca, as you can imagine with a bit of Bilbao thrown in, and kind of like parked that for many years, didn't even think about it. 

Chris Lee 04:47

And then I found myself traveling a lot with work, when I was VP of digital, this sort of thing. And I was going to Amsterdam quite a lot. And I'd go okay, take a game at Ajax, maybe get on the train, go and see Royal Antwerp down in Belgium, you know, just sort of like, have a look at different grounds rather than sort of be married to one particular one. 

Chris Lee 05:06

And obviously there's a big scene for this. And if you go on Facebook, there's lots of groups and stuff, you find this sort of like -minded community, you can meet up with these people. I thought, you know what, I'm doing this, you know, going to these places with where I'm taking in matches, I might as well chronicle it. 

Chris Lee 05:18

And then it sort of grew and started going back to, you know, that interest I had as a student, which was about exploring the culture and social and political elements of history. When I wrote my dissertation back in 1998. 

Chris Lee 05:29

The only book about, in English about football and politics was Simon Cooper's Football Against the Enemy, which was really groundbreaking and a lot of things are derivative from that. But trying to find unique angles is quite difficult. 

Chris Lee 05:41

But that's kind of led onto, you know, the podcast and then you make a lot of connections that way anyway. And then with the first book, I just found that I was going to a lot of either club museums or you know, like like we mentioned with Royal Antwerp already, it's the oldest club in Belgium. 

Chris Lee 05:57

There's a lot of things, you know, when you read a per country book like Morbo or Calcio or Tor, quite a lot of them are kind of, they don't really talk about how the game got going. There's maybe a chapter or, you know, maybe a few words on it. 

Chris Lee 06:08

And I thought, you know what, let's have a look at how the game got started, who influenced them. And that led to the first book, which is pretty much a bite -sized country per country guide in rough chronological order of how the game got taken from and written across the world. 

Chris Lee 06:21

And then the second book was more inspired by there's a lot of writing on football and the right wing and sort of actually, as I found as I go through it, a lot of studies on that as well. A lot of sort of organizations studying it and so thought, you know what, let's do the converse, let's see what the sort of counterpoint is. 

Chris Lee 06:41

And then that's where you come across really interesting stories about Italian partisans, footballing partisans in World War II, Greek partisans in World War II, and resistance even in prisoner of war camps during World War II, the Spanish Civil War... 

Chris Lee 06:55

Oh my God, there's so many different areas to go through in this as I kept going and it just kept kind of coming with that to sort of keep that within 75 ,000 words. 

Francesco Belcastro 07:03

That sometimes is a challenge, particularly when the topic is as rich as this one. 

Francesco Belcastro 07:09

You mentioned sort of the relationship between football and politics is really what kind of your work is kind of your driving force really in many ways. Could we start from that? Could we sort of talk a bit about how you understand this relationship in your work? 

Francesco Belcastro 07:25

What is the relationship between football and politics in your own understanding, your own work? 

Chris Lee 07:30

Well, if we say, okay, let's go for year zero is 1863 when the Football Association is founded and the rulebook is agreed. We all  know that football existed before that and I'm not going to get into the who invented football debate because that would be here forever. 

Chris Lee 07:41

But if we take that as year zero, we think about, okay, so in England and Scotland, football wasn't, there's more sort of sociological, I guess, you know, about working class versus upper classes, upper classes owned it first and I guess anywhere you go in the world

Chris Lee 07:54

This is a common theme in the late Victorian early 20th century, where the upper classes have it first, because they have the time and the money to do this. And the working class takes it over, at least at a playing and crowd level, if not administration. 

Chris Lee 08:08

So it doesn't really get political in England, Scotland, maybe it's sort of like sociological to do with like, you know, the working class was not really politic so much. So then you go to Ireland, and this is where football as a foreign import, especially by a colonial import, as it's, you know, it's an English game in an occupied country, effectively. 

Chris Lee 08:26

It's seen especially by nationalists as a garrison game. It's actually referred to that by Michael Collins, and "There should be no soccer for Gaels" is what he said. He's the kind of nationalist leader that many more know from the film, played by Liam Neeson. 

Chris Lee 08:39

And I think at that point, we've seen in 1884, the formation of the Gaelic Athletic Association to protect Irish games from English imports such as rugby football. cricket, hockey, these are the games that are going on, they're trying to protect Gaelic football and hurling. 

Chris Lee 08:53

And so that's that's been something that's played out even to the sort of current day really over there. But also during that period where football is taking off in even in places like Uruguay, Argentina becomes part of the national awakening. 

Chris Lee 09:05

Again, upper class is often kind of Anglo -Argentine or Anglo -Uruguayan or even German Uruguayan, German Argentine families that kind of ... um... are running the show in the first 20 years or so of football in those countries. Suddenly the working class, often of Italian Spanish descent, criollo as they're known, as native born but often of Mediterranean heritage. 

Chris Lee 09:28

That becomes part of that sort of national awakening, so to speak, helps define who they are. It's probably why football means so much more arguably to people in Argentina and Uruguay than it does to other countries. 

Chris Lee 09:38

But also you see elsewhere, you see like places where there is a colonial power and football gives you a level playing field. So in Egypt, where you've got Egyptian teams like Al -Ahly, which is one of the most successful African clubs now, it actually means The National. 

Chris Lee 09:51

So that's where, you know, the first Egyptian founded football club is still going and they, you know, they're playing against British regiments, French regiments or that sort of thing. And that's kind of seen as the, you know, that's a way to kick against the colonials. 

Chris Lee 10:03

The same happened in India. The one of the Cup finals, I think, so either 1909 or 1911, there was an Indian team that won for the first time. Mohun Bagan, they're called. And they, and that was a big moment in the sort of Indian kind of resistance movement. 

Chris Lee 10:18

And likewise, Turkey after World War One, when it was the end of the Ottoman Empire and the starting of the new Turkey. And 1923, the British and French who had a mandate over that area after World War One were on their way out anyway. 

Chris Lee 10:30

But it was football in Fenerbahce in particular, who was the club that kind of used to play in, was very successful against English and French team or British and French team regiments sides. It's part of the sort of national awakening for a lot of places. 

Guy Burton 10:42

Yeah. Can I just jump in there? Because I mean, I can understand that, you know, sort of the, when we're thinking about the colonizer and the colonized and the response, and obviously this is the response you're talking about, the form of resistance really from, from, from the colonized. 

Guy Burton 10:59

But what about places like, you know, because you mentioned that you did your research on Spain, for example, which would have been, you know, one, I mean, we're talking sort of end of the 19th century. 

Guy Burton 11:08

I mean, the sort of, they're declining colonial power themselves. In the case, I mean, you mentioned coming, coming to Antwerp, which, you know, Belgium was a colonizing power in the sort of late 19th century. 

Guy Burton 11:17

So is there a difference in the way that football relates to politics in these, you know, in the European metropole it were, which is different to, that different to, to, to England? 

Chris Lee 11:28

Well, I think actually, if anything, in Spain, it's, if you look at the earliest clubs, like Recreativo de Huelva, which is down in the south, which was set up by... the sort of... British Rio Tinto mining company. 

Chris Lee 11:40

And even if you go to the North Athletic Club, which was again, English founded, but of two different clubs, and they were quite, it's often seen quite as aspirational for their local communities because it was like, you know, the difference being Spain had faded and obviously the UK or Britain was like still the number one colonial kind of force in those days. 

Chris Lee 11:58

So it's almost seen as like British things were aspirational for some countries like Spain, and maybe so much Belgium, and also some novelty as well, because you know, it differs from country to country if we talk about that, because in Germany there's a big thing, like massively into "turnen", which is gymnastics, group gymnastics and things like that, which kind of gave birth, the things like Pilates and that, but they didn't like it. 

Chris Lee 12:19

Well, some of them didn't like football at all. They were saying it was like, you know, not for the first time the word English disease was used in relation to football. And it was like, they were like, decrying this thing as like, you know, what are people doing? 

Chris Lee 12:31

It's just rough and all that sort of thing. So it very much depends where you go as to how it was received. But this kind of only takes us up to the 1920s, what I've discovered... What we've discussed so far. 

Chris Lee 12:41

And it's at this point, the football really gets political. And that's where it's first used strategically. So where the book starts, because part of the reason I wrote the book was because it coincided with what would have been the centenary of Mussolini's March on Rome. 

Chris Lee 12:54

So 1922, he comes into power in Rome, and sets up the first world's first fascist state, and very much the template of what are the people that will follow him in the next decade or two in Germany, Spain, and in Portugal, which kind of look at as the sort of template of how to govern in a fascist way. 

Chris Lee 13:14

And he obviously, I think we'll come on to this in a moment anyway. So I won't preempt that. But Mussolini, who wasn't a footballing man, by the way, neither was Hitler, neither was Salazar. Only Franco out of all the European right wing dictators was actually into football. 

Chris Lee 13:27

But he saw the value of it, even by the 1920s, you know, because Italy wasn't very good before then at football. And then he sort of like saw it already as this is the world's most popular sport. How can we galvanize our own domestic game? 

Chris Lee 13:39

How can we utilize our expat community to strengthen our game and use it as a propaganda tool at home and abroad? 

Francesco Belcastro 13:48

Yeah. You mentioned sort of Mussolini and Hitler as well, and the fact that although they were not football mad, they realized, I think Mussolini in particular, the value of football. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:58

This also... Your book shows that these kind of gave room or gave origin to a reaction by football fans and supporters in some cases, even clubs. Can you perhaps tell us a bit how this reaction manifested itself? 

Chris Lee 14:13

Yeah, I mean, it's very hard in Mussolini's Italy, as you know, because you get arrested for the most kind of minor of things. So the resistance within Mussolini area, and I guess we can look at two different periods, ones out of the region, the period up to World War II, and then during it. 

Chris Lee 14:31

So in the period up to it, I guess we theoretically call it peacetime, at least domestically, but Italy was expanding into Albania and invading Libya and Abyssinia in places like Ethiopia nowadays, and places like this. 

Chris Lee 14:45

So the resistance in that... The domestic sense was often just players either like Bruno Neri, who was at Fiorentina, refusing to do the Roman salute, quite famously in the opening of the, what is now called the Artemio Franchi Stadium in Florence. 

Chris Lee 15:00

All the teams lined up with their arms aloft apart from him. And he goes on to die as a partisan in World War II. And there's that other little signs of people doing strikes or leading strikes or, you know, the great example that Marco Gianni, who is a Milan based academic, has looked into which is the role of women's football and the women have banned from playing football. 

Chris Lee 15:22

But there was a group in Milan that kept playing despite... In fact they even drew crowds of like a thousand plus, including members of Mitropa Cup teams that would come to visit, you know, Milan and things like that. 

Chris Lee 15:37

So it was it's quite interesting how these games kind of went ahead in in peacetime or people would get away with little things. And if you were good enough, you'd probably, you know, you get away with a little bit. 

Chris Lee 15:49

But a lot of the players' careers were hindered a bit. And where they found a bit of a refuge was a third tier club called Lucchese from Luca, which was managed by an Erno Egri Erbstein, who was a Hungarian Jew, who famously goes on to manage Il Grande Torino back after World War II, having survived the Holocaust himself back in Hungary. 

Chris Lee 16:11

So a lot of these sort of... He didn't have any issue with people's politics, and they were quite happy to sign them for Lucchese if they could play well enough. 

Guy Burton 16:21

And what about fans? I mean, because one of the things that's notable, I mean, we will come to talk about it, you know, sort of some of the more recent developments. 

Guy Burton 16:28

But if you take, I mean, you touched upon Egypt, for example, I mean, the ultras of some of the Egyptian clubs are very influential in sort of the protests back in the Arab uprisings back in 2011. What about back in 1930, in the case of Italy? 

Guy Burton 16:44

Do we see any sort of fan organization? Fan activism against the regime? 

Chris Lee 16:50

Not really at home, but where we see it is abroad. You see little things happening like Austria before the Anschluss, so when they were forcibly annexed to Germany. 

Chris Lee 17:01

Whenever Italy visited, there was quite often a bit of either crowd trouble or stones being thrown, and problems on the pitch as well between players, because they could see what was happening really next door in Germany and Italy, and that's obviously where Austria is, they sort of felt threatened and rightly so. 

Chris Lee 17:18

But most notably, I guess, was during the France 38 World Cup. Italy are going in as defending champions, of course, after the controversial 34 World Cup. In Marseille, the first match against Norway, there's the Italian national anthem and the Giovinezza, which is the fascist anthem played with it, was booed and jeered loudly. 

Chris Lee 17:39

And bear in mind that in Marseille, this time you have Italian emigres who have escaped from Mussolini. You've also got a lot of Spanish emigres because they've had to escape from the Spanish Civil War, which Italy is part of at this point, bombing places like Guernica and Barcelona and Valencia and places like that. 

Chris Lee 17:54

So they're very much jeered at this point. And Vitorio Pozzo, who was the manager of the national side at this point, said, you know, he wanted to put a marker down and said, like, we'll hold that salute until the jeering stops. 

Chris Lee 18:08

So it's very much for trade off between psychological, I guess, battle to show that they weren't intimidated by the crowd. So you see resistance there. You see it as well in, I mean, the Germans experience it as well. 

Chris Lee 18:18

Nazi Germany at this point, 1938 after the Anschluss. So they, they've absorbed the Austrian team. They can't make the Austrian team blend with them. They get knocked out in the first round. Italy kind of scraped through that first match, but they face opposition everywhere. 

Chris Lee 18:31

They go in, you know, right up to the final really. And they wore black in one match against France, which was the fascist kind of uniform. It's the only time that Italy wore black. 

Guy Burton 18:41

During the Second World War, there's a sort of a general sort of sense that... Our general understanding is that actually football stops during the course of the Second World War. 

Guy Burton 18:49

And yet your book actually starts with, you know, the story behind the 1981 film Escape to Victory, the one, I mean, those of us of an older generation will remember that film. But I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about that. 

Guy Burton 19:04

I mean, in the... that football actually was being formed a tool of resistance, you know, during the Second World War as well. 

Chris Lee 19:11

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say it's a tool of resistance. It was not going to, football wasn't going to overthrow the Nazis and push them back. 

Chris Lee 19:16

But it was a way of getting one over. But it was just that there was a league, basically, when Ukraine was occupied by as a victim of geography as it is, as we know right now. It was part of the Soviet Union at this point. 

Chris Lee 19:30

And it was... the Nazis occupied Ukraine on the way to, on the march to Moscow, which ultimately failed. But during that sort of time, a couple of years that they were occupied by Nazis, obviously lots of pogroms was going on, etc. 

Chris Lee 19:43

And a lot of the population, even the non -Jewish population were being exported for work reasons and things like that. So everyone's very, you know, under oppression basically. But to sort of do this sort of bread and circuses deflection thing, obviously they had to keep their own soldiers occupied so the Nazi overlords in Kiev decided to have a little local league. 

Chris Lee 20:05

And one of the teams that were there was a bakery side called FC Start, which was mostly staffed by former Dynamo and Locomotiv players who were of the [main] Kiev outfits, obviously very good teams. So they could play a bit, obviously probably not as fit and nourished as the German players. 

Chris Lee 20:24

But they played in the league and they won a famous match which was... became legendary because of post -war Soviet propaganda more than anything else, which was that, oh, they beat the Nazis and then in retribution, they're all taken away in shot, which is not what happened at all. 

Chris Lee 20:38

What really happened was... Yes, they won twice against this Flakelf, which was the 11 of the Gunners team from the Air Force. And they won this infamous 5 -3, I think it was the score line eventually, and there was all these rumors about where they're intimidated in the dressing room, and these are all things that play out in the Great Escape, sorry, not the Great Escape, Escape to Victory. 

Chris Lee 21:04

And so, yeah, they were... But four members of the team were executed at the hands or died at the hands of Nazis in the following weeks and months. So it wasn't like immediate, like the post -war software propaganda said, but obviously what happened, because the Soviets were in charge of Ukraine for like another 40 -odd years after World War II, they kind of, that rumor propagated for a long time. 

Chris Lee 21:30

So yeah, I spoke to local people about that just to understand what the context was, and obviously I wrote that, I did that interview before current invasion. 

Guy Burton 21:37

And then of course... I mean, and the book isn't just about this pre -war period, it also goes into looking at the relationship between football and fascism, and challenges to that, after the Second World War. 

Guy Burton 21:50

And then it moves focus away from Europe and towards some of these places that we talked about a little bit earlier, Latin America, and then between the 1960s and 80s, where there were prominent and significant military dictatorships, you know, whether we're thinking down in Argentina and Uruguay and Brazil and Chile. 

Guy Burton 22:06

I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that. 

Chris Lee 22:09

Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess at this point, weirdly and quite conveniently for the dictators of that time it coincides with their sides being very good, obviously Brazil. 

Chris Lee 22:20

There's a coup in 1964, so the democratically elected president is overthrown. And by 1970, obviously, the Brazil won the World Cup again. And the President Medici... Medici makes a lot of that. And, you know, the Brazil team become, I guess, you know, unwittingly kind of poster boys for: isn't it great? 

Chris Lee 22:41

We're progressive. And the difference between Brazil, for you, kind of selling yourself as a future thinking countrywhich  has got those new... you know... new capital in Brazil, all that wonderful architecture, the music's phenomenal at this point. 

Chris Lee 22:53

So it's doing quite, you know, it's economically doing very well. And so it's kind of like just trying to sell themselves to the world and football is kind of part of that, you know, and those wonderful kind of yellow shirts kind of help. 

Chris Lee 23:04

So the next one. Argentina very famously in the 1978 World Cup: there was a lot of discussion as to whether it should go ahead because it was awarded before... A bit like the 1936 Olympics. It was awarded before the Nazis came to power. 

Chris Lee 23:16

And similarly, Argentina, it's kind of their turn. They're the only major footballing countries in South America not to have hosted the World Cup at that point. Everyone else had even Chile. 

Chris Lee 23:25

And so it was kind of their turn. It's very difficult to sort of not have that. But obviously, there's lots of controversy around 78 World Cup and what went on during it. And you can argue, if anything, did the 78 World Cup help 

Chris Lee 23:40

shine a light on what was going on down there rather than... and it's kind of like self -defeating because you know they... It was meant to be a kind of great nationalist kind of spring board... They went and invaded the the Falklands a few years later, well, it happened to be Malvinas and... But it didn't mean... If anything it helped accelerate that well, especially invading the Malvinas... Did it accelerate the end of the junta, which was in 1983 - was it, I can't remember exactly when it fell but it was like not long after. The similar thing moves in Uruguay... People don't know this about Uruguay really because now it's like the most probably progressive and prosperous of the South American countries. But in 1980 it was also under dictatorship, with more head per population in prison than anywhere else the world apparently at that point, you know per head of population. So they had a thing called Mundialito to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first World Cup. And it was held at the Centenario which was  obviously where the way the first World Cup was held in Montevideo. And the whole idea was meant to be try to emulate the 28 World Cup that Argentina had enjoyed and win that because Uruguay hadn't qualified. And they did win it. And they they beat, you know, Brazil team which featured Socrates and a sort of great lineup in 1980-81 when it was held over the winter period featuring all the previous World Cup winners - apart from who guess who? England because they wouldn't take part so The Netherlands who lost the previous two finals kind of steps- stepped in for them. So if anything again, the crowd turns on the government at this point. I guess with going back to the fundamental thing about football is you've got collective security in numbers, right? 

Chris Lee 25:11

How you going to arrest 30 ,000 40 ,000 people? And that's why you can get away with speaking, you know, Catalan in Camp Nou during the Franco era or or Basque at Real Sociedad or Athletic club in the same era. So you know, you can get away with it without too much fear of arrest because there would be too much backlash...

Francesco Belcastro 25:32

Can I ask you something? In the case of South America that you mentioned, this, this idea of football providing a space for opposition is quite well known. 

Francesco Belcastro 25:41

I mean, this is obviously the case of Socrates and Democracia Corinthiana, which Guy will correct my pronunciation for probably. I italianized it! 

Guy Burton 25:50

You're all good. You're all good. 

Francesco Belcastro 25:51

Thanks, Guy. Thank you. But this is not something unique to Brazil, right? There are other cases in which you would say that that kind of providing a space of expression in the South American case and beyond is quite evident. 

Francesco Belcastro 26:05

Could you perhaps give us some examples that would be interesting for the listeners? 

Chris Lee 26:09

Yeah. Yeah, fan movements are interesting, actually, because I guess as a spectator sport, football only comes when you start to see organized fan groups. 

Chris Lee 26:19

You start seeing that going back to Brazil, actually. It allegedly comes out of the 1950 World Cup, a lot of Yugoslav fans went to Brazil, saw how the torcidas, the fans of Brazil were behaving there with the Tifo and the choreographed singing and things like that. 

Chris Lee 26:36

And they kind of brought that back to Croatia as it was then. Hadjuk Split, I think they were fans of. And then at the same time over in England we had this sort of like terrace culture of you know the Kop and all the sort of singing that goes on there plus the edgier side of it, the hooliganism. 

Chris Lee 26:51

And then in Italy that kind of came together after the economic miracle of the 60s and things getting a bit angsty in the stands. And the things were... It was big... A lot of the ultras in Italy started off on the left didn't they, back in the 60s and 70s and then they kind of migrated towards the right as kind of the country did I guess, as much of the country did. 

Chris Lee 27:13

So you know... I'd say the right... I think you can correct me here Francesco, but I think it's probably fair to say that of the political leading ultras groups most probably on the right of the dial rather than the left. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:24

Today definitely in Italy, there's a few exceptions that are on the left 

Chris Lee 27:27

Yeah a few like Livorno and things like that. 

Francesco Belcastro 27:29

Yeah most of them are right wing. 

Chris Lee 27:32

Yeah exactly. So I mean... Here's the thing: are we within football overplaying this? 

Chris Lee 27:36

Would the people in the street who aren't in that 20 ,000 people in the stadium really notice the politics of football? Are we just like overplaying its role by by focusing on it and saying oh that this group you know this handful of hundreds or thousands, a couple of thousand people waving banners, and saying something in the stand are actually reflective of the entire society? 

Chris Lee 27:54

Not sure. We might be overplaying it. But I think it's fair to examine as is it reflection on the size of where you are at that time? 

Guy Burton 28:01

Well I mean you mentioned if it's been overplayed; if memory serves me - because you talked about Yugoslavia - and you know when Yugoslavia was breaking up I believe that, you know some of the ultra groups that supported... I think it was, you know... 

Francesco Belcastro 28:18

Dynamo Zagreb. 

Guy Burton 28:19

Yes and they basically became, you know, the troops. And then there's also exactly on the Serbian side as well I think you have Aslan who you know started out...

Chris Lee 28:34

Arkan

Guy Burton 28:35

Arkan. sorry. Aslan! 

Chris Lee 28:36

That's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

Guy Burton 28:39

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! Yeah, so Arkan who starts out as an ultra leader who then becomes associated with the political leadership of Serbia at the time, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 28:52

There is the famous accident of Zvonimir Boban kicking a policeman during a Dinamo Zagreb- 

Chris Lee 28:57

Yeah, 1990. 

Francesco Belcastro 28:59

-Red Star match which people say it started the civil war. It didn't start it. 

Chris Lee 29:02

The Battle of Maksimir. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:03

The Civil War, but yeah. 

Chris Lee 29:05

Yeah, it's famous. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:06

Can I just add one thing for the benefit of listeners? There is... We have got an excellent episode that came out three weeks ago on the politics of football and race in Brazil that complements very well some of the discussions that we had with Chris, with Ana Paula da Silva. Listeners that enjoyed this one should really go and check that one out as well. Sorry to interrupt. 

Chris Lee 29:28

I meant... No, that's fine. I mentioned that a little bit in both my books, actually the story of Vasco de Gama and their sort of famous, historical response to racism in the 1920s, you know, that helped open the door for a lot of not just African descent players, but also of working class players as well. 

Chris Lee 29:46

So it's kind of like, yeah, it's interesting. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:47

This has been very interesting and fascinating, the historical aspect of it. But I was wondering, is it something that only applies to history? Is that... What's the situation now? 

Francesco Belcastro 29:57

Is the political right still using football for the same purposes? And how is this being challenged? 

Chris Lee 30:03

Oh yeah. I mean, football will always be political, has been since the beginning, and always kind of will be. 

Chris Lee 30:10

And I speak not just the right, but I'll just talk about politics in general. We've seen it say whenever the Euros comes out. We've seen it when there's debates about who should be hosting the World Cup. 

Chris Lee 30:19

And then that shines a light on human rights, rights records of whoever that is. And just in December, 2023, we saw the Republic of Ireland's national anthem sung for the very first time in Windsor Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a women's match. 

Chris Lee 30:37

So, you know, because there's been that historical resistance to having that song played just in case of, you know, because of the potential reaction in Northern Ireland. So it's kind of, you know, that's kind of just to show you that football and politics are, well, in that case, can be a healing thing as well as anything else. 

Chris Lee 30:55

But it's also like football and politics can be quite.. you know... the two always can be related basically. And it'd be very naive. You get this with politicians and they go, sort of like, football and politics shouldn't mix. 

Chris Lee 31:05

It's like where they're going to, and you're very naive, or you don't really understand the history of the sport, which is what I'm trying to, people like you and I are trying to try to shine a light on. 

Francesco Belcastro 31:15

I'm really glad to hear that, because that's a kind of underpinning theme of my own work, this idea that, you know, it's very naive or even worse to say, well, politics and football shouldn't... sport in general shouldn't mix. 

Chris Lee 31:27

I think it's, well, I mean, it's basically sport is like a, like some going back to the level playing field thing: It's always going to be that way. If we play, especially national level, you're going to pick a country versus the other, someone you want to lose more than anyone else. 

Chris Lee 31:41

So it's kind of like, you know, there's always going to be that element of it's all about identity. It's all about about politics sometimes as well. So very much an act of resistance. You like the fact that your side wins, hopefully. 

Francesco Belcastro 31:54

That's great. Thank you very much, Chris. Guy. 

Guy Burton 31:57

No, thank you. That was really, really informative and very rich. I feel that we sort of covered a lot of different, you know... There's so much more that we could talk about. 

Guy Burton 32:05

But I think, you know, trying to cover, you know, the great range of things from the 1920s and 30s up to the present is quite a challenge within the half hour or so that we have. So Chris, I would like to say thank you so much. 

Guy Burton 32:16

And maybe we can also have you come back at some point, maybe talk about other aspects of the game. 

Chris Lee 32:21

Just on that, thanks very much. Yeah, very happy to come on because I realized we only really scratched the surface in a very general sense. There's so many things we could deep dive into that we cover in the book. 

Guy Burton 32:29

Well, thank you so much. Anyways, now. Francesco, what else do we need to say to the listeners and... 

Francesco Belcastro 32:36

Well, we need to remind the listeners the usual things. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:39

But they are very important, however. So to like, follow, share the podcast and the episode in particular, to get in touch with us, because we are on all social media, aren't we, Guy? 

Guy Burton 32:52

Yeah, we're on Twitter / X, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram. 

Guy Burton 32:56

We have a Blue Sky account. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:58

We do have a Blue Sky account. You are on LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn as well. So it's very easy to get in touch with us and we really want to hear from people in terms of feedback, in terms of what episodes would be interesting to do in the future. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:12

And we also need to remind listeners that we're going to be back here next Monday with an excellent episode. Do you remember what the topic is, Guy? 

Guy Burton 33:19

No, but you're going to tell me. It's on? 

Francesco Belcastro 33:21

Okay. It's on the Polities of Football Ultras with James Montague. 

Guy Burton 33:25

Great. Well, thank you very much. So, Chris, once again, thank you for taking the time to speak to us. Francesco, I'll see you again next week. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:32

Next Monday, next Monday morning. Okay, bye. 

Chris Lee 33:35

Thanks, everyone. 

Francesco Belcastro 33:36

Thank you. Thanks, Chris. Thank you.