Psychological profile of football fans

Basically I think the bulk of research on this kind of thing almost always shows it comes down to socialisation experience - ie did you have a positive experience at an impressionable age that was then reinforced by those around you? This isn't exactly surprising. But, there's loads of stuff out there about group identities - and some people feeling the need to have a kind of collective experience more than others.  A reasonable theory that the reason why football culture in England is so deep and widespread compared with other countries (ie 5 leagues that are stacked full of teams that can attract 4 figure+ attendances) is that the industrial revolution in Britain was so widespread.  Football was the sport of the industrial working class pretty much everywhere and in England that process was relatively spread out rather than in most countries, particularly late arrivals to it, industry was concentrated around 1 or 2 key industrial centres.  People then transferred tight knit working culture to their recreational habits - ie they liked being in a communal environment because it was what they were used to, and it doesn't take long to become a strong part of people's identity.  It's why there were always football clubs in relatively small Northern and Midlands towns but big places like Cheltenham, Worcester, Taunton (market towns in other words with a totally different history and culture) never really took to the game.  It's also considered to be a reason why football was relatively slow to take off in London.

The point is some people get a kick out of that tribal entity experience - others find it off putting and intimidating.  It's not even an introvert/extrovert thing - just where some people feel more comfortable.  In the modern world though I suspect football support is largely inherited now in some way - not something you stumble on by accident.  Interestingly, there's a great deal of evidence that our sports culture is slowly shifting from the idea of collective team sports to individual ones.  Fewer and fewer people are playing team sports and more and more are doing things like cycling, running, gym etc.  Fits into their lives better and they don't feel they need that group experience because it's not the way we live now.  It's considered one of the reasons that cycling has become so popular.  This particular issue is causing cricket administrators a hell of a headache right now.  Even more interesting than that is reports from the US saying young people are now more likely to identify with individual players and have quite fluid team allegiances that are no longer tied to where they live.  Reasons for this is that in the States people are no longer tied to their local markets - they can watch any game anywhere at any time.  Tickets are very expensive so unless you are from a wealthy family you are not going to build up a link to watch a team regularly and getting the buzz of that communal expeirence.  The game is marketed around individual players more than teams and fantasy sports is a much bigger thing in the US especially among kids - almost their primary way of following the game apparently.  So it socialises them into a very individual orientated way of following sport.  I think it's beginning to happen here a bit - I'm amazed how many local Manchester kids I have met who support Chelsea despite having City and United on their doorstep and parents who support Manchester clubs.

Fascinating and very interesting piece Irish. Don't think you are very far away from the truth.

For those of us of a certain age, football was our main sport outside of school. It was inexpensive to play (all you needed was a ball of sorts) and a couple of jumpers or sticks for posts - and even attending matches was very reasonable. I recall paying 2/- to enter Eastville and 1/- transfer into the North Enclosure. That's 15p in new money. It was a chance for a group of us to watch football of a good standard and re-enact the goals on the way back in Eastville Park or Hillfields Park (in my case). In the summer, cricket took over for a few months, and even many professional footballers played cricket at a high standard. Arthur Milton and Harold Jarman spring immediately to mind.

No computer games or social media then. Subbuteo or table football was the only way we could play football games indoors.
Yes, it was very much a working class game - Rugby was the sport of choice for the upper echelon of society, and at that time it was a purely amateur game - professional players (or even leagues) did not exist.

Tribal? Quite possibly. But nothing sinister - it was just a way for a group of us to enjoy ourselves on a Saturday or the occasional evening.
These days things have changed dramatically. So much money. So much merchandise. So much access to the players via social media. And so much easier to support a "winning" team, irrespective of location.

In days of yore, your local team was made up of local players, some of whom would have been known personally by the fans. These days players come from the four corners of the globe. The days of "one club" players are also a thing of the past.

So to sum up, football is very much a reflection of society at the time. Wonder what we will all be thinking in 50 years time?

That's really interesting and I think it's right.  I don't really mean tribal in the sinister way it's often referred to in negative articles on football fans.  Just literally the idea that people get a kick out of that group identity - it needn't be a bad thing, in fact I'd argue that generally it can be a very positive thing.  That'sLife is right about the Desmond Morris stuff - and I think there are many people working in Psychology who have also demonstrated this since.  The interesting question is not neccesarily why do people become football fans? I think that's been pretty well established.  The question is - how does football culture sustain itself in an era when those identities are becoming looser?

The world you describe is the world in which the football culture we all know was born and then replicated itself I think; it did evolve overtime more than peoplen think but the basics remained the same.  It's hard to get away from the fact that in previous eras peoples choices were more limited in terms of what was available for them to do.  Those local players didn't really have the option to move to other clubs - the structures and culture just weren't there to facilitate it.  Now, a player thinking of upping sticks from Bristol to London just wouldn't be that big a deal - in fact it would be par for the course and they'd be entirely mentally prepared for it as part of the expectations of their profession.  In an era when people generally move around a lot more and it's easier to keep in contact with everyone there's different expectations around local connections.  For my generation (I'm 32) I'd say it's almost considered a bit weird if you didn't at some point move from the community you grew up in for a significant period (University but also jobs, partners, training, new experiences, just for hell of it sometimes etc).  So it has a different cultural meaning - put simply it's far less of a big life event because it's something a lot of people (probably even most) do.  If you couple that with the maximum wage etc., there was not that much incentive for players to move really and take the fairly big risk breaking all those local ties which were of far more importance then than they are now.  It would have taken a certain type of person with a certain type of attitude to do that - you'd be swimming against the tide and general expectations of your times so to speak.  If you just went with the flow, as most people do most of the time, you were going to stay right where you are.  Rather than now it takes a certain type of person to actually say 'I'm sticking here' - if you go with the flow and the expectations that are on most people then you are likely to move around quite a lot.  Doesn't just apply to football I think.  A lot of my friends who have largely stayed in Bristol all their lives made a kind of concious decision to do so, ie. 'this is what I value in life' - and to do that they may have rejected other avenues they could have gone down.  Whereas I don't think it would have been neccesary to make that concious decision in other eras - in fact it was more likely to be negative decision to breakaway from your community because jobs had gone down the pan etc.

It's a massive generalisation but it's broadly a middle class values vs working class values thing.  Middle class aspiration to say 'I'm going to pursue my life and try and make the most of every opportunity available' vs working class commitment to the value of community broadly defined as a vital support network which is central to your life (as something you benefit from and have obligations towards).  There's always been a mix of priorities and obviously not every working class/middle class person held to those values.  But, in general, as society has become more and more middle class - those set of expectations have become the norm (and that's linked to opportunites available to people etc) and replaced the previous set of expectations.  The best example I can think of is that in my cricket club there's a big difference between the expectations put on the kids I coach from a Pakistani background and the ones from the White Middle Class background.  Both groups put very strong emphasis on the value of education in their children.  But the working class Pakistani kids, normally irrespective of ability, nearly all end up studying at a local University because the expectation on them is that they directly help and support their families and community. The white middle class kids are pretty much ordered by their families to move away to study because the parents don't want to think they are in any way restricting their opportunities by making them feel they have an obligation to stay at home; in fact they worry about them becoming too reliant on home comforts.

So that's a big change I feel that does mean people are generally less tied to their local community is all kinds of ways - and it does permanently break that quite remarkable link between players and fans. Where they're not just representing you - they kind of are you.  One manifestation of that might be the fact that players are generally treated with far less respect by fans.  It's more and more us (the fans) and them (the players); and they are seen to owe us.  This has been a change in my lifetime - when I was growing up players always seemed to be respected even still idolised.  These days fans can't wait to judge, harrang and generally dismiss players as bad people for the smallest thing.  It just amazes me how many football fans out there seem to actively dislike (and sometimes hate) actual footballers.  It's a really odd dynamic; love the sport, love the teams - hate the players. A bizarre position to take - footballers seems increasingly de-humanised by football fans.  It's all about that distance isn't it.  Where does that end though? Do people eventually drift away from connections with teams?

You're right of course that money, merchandising, an individualing of the game effects this.  If you put the individual player on this ridiculous pedestal then people will take pleasure from knocking him down and won't see him as a person but just as a representation of a footballer (and good luck to the player himself having to deal with that at a young age with all the crap that goes with it by the way).  Social Change obviously makes a big difference too - more middle class society, more individualistic values, social media etc.  People want the space to create a personal relationship with sport on their terms like we do in nearly all other aspects of our lives now - not opt into an existing culture with defined boundaries.  I get this in cricket - when I was 'learning the ropes' it was generally accepted that a young player breaking into adult cricket was probably going to have to bat 8-11, only get the occasional bowl and field well until they got the opportunity to prove themselves largely based on having earned it by making that sacrifice to the team.  It was almost a kind of ritual.  Impose that on young players now and you wouldn't have a team in 2 years! They'll just walk away from the game and on their terms why shouldn't they? It's not worth the effort when there's other sporting options that don't require that sacrifice of individual experience to a team ethic.  But the point is people want engagement on their own terms.  'This club wants me to bat 3 and not bowl, well I'll go down the road to this club instread where they let me open the batting and bowling'  What that person is getting out of their experience is not a collective sense of team but a personal sense of self-fulfillment almost completely disconnected from the team itself.  Happens all the time now and it's a big issue in cricket which of all team sports requires some people being prepared to take a lesser role for the team to function.  So it's not that surprising that the ultimate expression of that is to remove team entirely from the experience. Hence the absolutely massive explosion in cycling, running clubs, etc and the continuing decline in numbers for pretty much all traditional team sports.  People think it's to do with the time constraints of modern life and older team sports struggling to reflect - I think it's more of an existensial issue, people don't have the same general mentality they had when team sports exploded into society.  What it means to how fan culture evolves though - I'm not sure.  I was struck when I went to watch Man City the other night how much non-football stuff made up the experience? There was a live band, a booth for kids to play computer games, about 10-15 bar and restaurant options and this was a Tuesday night v Hull City!  Maybe that's the way it will have to go to survive - allowing people to make their own individualised fan experience.