Half-and-half shirts

Half-and-half shirts (or scarves) made up of the kit of two opposing teams are a curious football phenomenon.   Some of them are evidently run up at home, but commentators see them as representative of broader unhealthy trends in the game.

Half-and-half shirts (or scarves) made up of the kit of two opposing teams are a curious football phenomenon.   Some of them are evidently run up at home, but commentators see them as representative of broader unhealthy trends in the game.

John Williams of the University of Leicester was interviewed about them on Radio 5 this lunchtime.  He saw them as representing a trend to treat matches as an ‘event’, a form of sporting tourism.   It represented a trend towards the commodification of football and its removal from communities of allegiance.

Those communities of allegiance are much less geographical than they used to be, particularly for the top clubs.  In some respects they are invented communities, creating a version of reality, and in particular an imagined past, that fans find reassuring.

Williams is a Liverpool fan and I was surprised to hear that anyone who entered his pub with a bag from the club shop would be greeted with derision, but I suppose that says something about the detachment of some fans from the commercial side of the game.