Walking alone together the Liverpool Way: fan culture and ‘clueless’ Yanks
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14660970.2012.655510
ISSN1743-9590
Autores Tópico(s)Sports Analytics and Performance
ResumoHistorically, supporters at Liverpool football club have shown relatively few signs of collective supporter radicalism. Indeed the belief among the club's followers that there is a highly specific and culturally embedded approach to managing the club's affairs, one which positively emphasises consensus and privacy – the Liverpool Way – actually has its roots in the ruthless, autocratic control practised by its directors in the 1950s. This relative supporter passivity slowly began to change, initially and culturally, after the appointment of Bill Shankly as Liverpool manager in 1959, and then more formally and more 'politically' following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985. More recently, under the auspices of two distinctive and very different locally based supporter campaigns Share Liverpool and Spirit of Shankly, Liverpool fans have displayed an unusual level of collective organisation and militancy to oppose and help unseat the dilatory and profiteering Anfield regime of two American venture capitalists, Tom Hicks and George Gillett. This article explores the tensions between the necessarily global nature today of this sort of popular opposition, the recent hyper-commodification of the Premier League and its clubs, and the emphasis among supporter groups in Liverpool on maintaining 'authentic' forms of local cultural practice and identity formation around football in the face of the sometimes grim realities of globalisation and foreign ownership.
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