"Old fans" and "new fans"? - Fan cultures in West European football of the long 1960s: a transnational comparison of structures and trends in West Germany, France and Italy

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For a long time, football fandom met with a largely negative scientific interest and only came into the focus of contemporary historical considerations relatively late. In addition, the topic was primarily approached under nation-state criteria, while aspects of comparative and / or transfer history were at best mentioned marginally in most cases. The dynamics of change of the long 1960s have also hardly played a role so far. This is where the project starts, by consistently understanding und examining the emerging fan culture of the years between 1955 and 1975 as a transnational phenomenon of popular culture. The starting point is the development that began in Italy in the 1950s, where groups of football club supporters first cultivated a specific subcultural appearance that spread to southern France and western Germany in the course of the long 1960s. The transnational approach makes it possible to critically question the innovative character of the increased degree of organization and its causes, and to confront it with the profound socio-cultural changes of those years. For example, the extent to which the founding of fan clubs was primarily an indication of an organized sense of belonging over a greater distance between the club supporters, or whether it was motivated by political goals or a processing of profound changes, such as a growing need for emotional shelter in the light of rising trends of individualization, should be assessed. That is why the project aims to analyze fan cultures not only as publicly perceived mass phenomenon, but also in a micro-historical perspective on the basis of specific case studies. The transnational perspective promises a variety of insights into similarities, differences and cross-border developments, especially against the background of an increasing Europeanization of professional football in the long 1960s.