The existential contradictions between football and leftism make life as a leftist football fan a constant war with yourself.
“If every rightwing thinktank came up with a scheme to distract the populace from political injustice and compensate them for lives of hard labour, the solution in each case would be the same: football. No finer way of resolving the problems of capitalism has been dreamed up, bar socialism. And in the tussle between them, football is several light years ahead.”
—Terry Eagleton, “Football: a dear friend to capitalism”
“Football is a socialist sport. Financially, some may receive more rewards than others but, from a footballing perspective, for 90 minutes, regardless of whether you are Lionel Messi or the substitute right-back for Argentina, you are all working to the same end.”
For a sport that purportedly belongs to the working class, football—the professional sport as it exists today—is anything but aligned with labor or leftist politics. It’s easy to think of football players, clubs, and fan groups with right-wing inclinations, from the moderately conservative to the outright fascist. Looking for a political left-winger in professional football is equivalent to the proverbial search for a needle among stacks of hay. Paolo Sollier was a self-identified communist and a 70’s counterculture icon of the Italian game; when asked for his opinion on how difficult it is to be a leftist football player today, Sollier replied: “I don’t know. I have never met one.”
A staggering claim, when you consider just how broad a term is “leftism.” In the simplest sense a leftist is anyone who subscribes to politics of egalitarianism and cooperation, in opposition to systems of social inequality. Historically, leftism manifested as anarchist, communist, socialist, and radical democratic movements for working class liberation. Anti-war, civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements fall under the umbrella of leftism today.