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Over the years the discussion of football has taken a number of diverse turns ranging from the knee-jerk response of the gutter press to the erudite prose of some of the finest writers on sport. It has also attracted the attention of academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds but usually sharing a common interest — a love for their object of study, the game of professional football. In talking with the various authors who contributed to the collection which emanated from the First World Congress on the Science of Football (Reilly, Lees, Davids and Murphy, 1988), it was clear that the logic for their studies was, first, an unexpected passion for the game followed by the need to turn their academic talents to its analysis. This is not merely a casual observation on the idiosyncrasies of my colleagues who share my affliction but an important introduction to the argument presented here because no one has managed to identify what it is that holds the interest of such a diverse group of people under the single umbrella of "football fans". Yet there is an underlying assumption within the analyses that we know what we are talking about. Moreover, there is an increasing feeling that one group of scholars has come closest to solving the problems of modern football and are now being asked to define the terrain for the discussion in the future. This chapter is an attempt to question the basis of that assumption and to take issue with some of the basic theoretical and empirical evidence on which that position depends.

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-11191-6_9

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