Englandfans – A New Club for a New England? Social Inclusion, Authenticity and the Performance of Englishness at ‘Home’ and ‘Away’

Abstract

Increasingly there is a desire amongst political and administrative authorities concerned with the management of English professional football to extend the ‘sense’ of transformation witnessed in the popularity and cultures of support surrounding the domestic game to the national team. However, there is a widely held perception that both the social formations constituted around the England team and media representations of them have proven resistant to the cultural shift (imagined or otherwise) associated with domestic club football. Concern within the UK Home Office, the English Football Association (FA) and some supporters' groups has led to a high profile attempt to overcome this ‘resistance’ and ‘re‐market’ the image of England supporters in order to create a more socially inclusive supporter base. Drawing on ethnographic and textual data collected in the build up to, and during, the 2002 men's football World Cup finals, this paper considers the frameworks of knowledge associated with this intervention and their impact on the cultural forms of support for the England team during the World Cup, in specific locations both at ‘home’ and ‘away’. This consideration then gives way to an interpretation of the extent to which ‘Englishness’ continues to be performed in culturally exclusive ways that emphasize the contingency of new and emergent social formations.