Abstract:
This article analyses the contradictions and conflicts in the Brazilian contemporary football, based on the associative dynamics of specific vanguards of football fans at the forefront against economic, social and architectural changes in stadiums and club administration. These vanguards are basically divided into two groups: the first one, the “traditional supporters” groups (TS), opposes the process of criminalization and legal-economic exclusion of Brazilian fans, a consequence, among others, of stadiums becoming multiuse arenas; the second one, comprising mostly non-TS fans, is called “collectives”. The latter, formed by students, professors and fans in general, has an explicit left-wing ideology, incorporating flags and collective issues such as fighting racism and advocating for gender equality in football. In this sense, the text concludes that ways of resistance have been articulated among certain fringes of football fans in the last years. These fringes have been able to start defending the rights of the fans. However, this kind of protoconsciousness is still dispersed in a myriad of subgroups that until now face concrete difficulties to direct and vocalize, in a unified way, their claims.
Keywords:
“traditional supporters” groups; collectives of supporters; resistance to “modern football”