Four humanities researchers – Christian Bromberger, Abderrahim Bourkia, Sébastien Louis and Ljiljana Zeljkovic – in some cases accompanied by a conservator – Florent Molle – and photographers – Giovanni Ambrosio and Yves Inchiermann – collected more than 400 objects, some 3,000 photographs and more than 6 hours of video recordings. The collected object and photographs will, upon their return from the field and after being studied, be presented to the Mucem’s Acquisition Committees, who will decide whether or not to include them in the public collections and put them on display.

Football is more than a game. It is simultaneously the most popular sport in the world, a performance, a globalized economy and a rather faithful reflection of the contemporary societies in which they are evolving. So it was almost natural for the Mucem, as a societal museum, to take an interest in this sociological phenomenon. An ethnography of social belonging, that is expressed during football matches, was initially launched in 2014, namely through a study of derbies, those matches during which two clubs from the same city confront one another (in Algiers, Casablanca, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Mostar and Tunis, for example). Our interest then turned more specifically to the “ultra” movement, a youth sub-culture that is present throughout Europe and the Mediterranean (with surveys conducted in Algeria, Israel, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, the West Bank and in France, in Marseille).

This research programme, dedicated to the study of contemporary practices in terms of supporterism, has supplemented the work done to enhance the collections carried out on the art market and with private collectors, and to more broadly document the history of Mediterranean football. Thus, since 2015, the Mucem has acquired the official poster for the opening match of the 1930 World Cup between France and Mexico, the shirts of a number of great players (like Alfredo di Stefano, Michel Platini, Diego Maradona, Zinédine Zidane and Cristiano Ronaldo) and objects representing Marseille’s supporterism.

All this research and these acquisitions fuelled the idea and the course of the football exhibition “We Are Football”, that the Mucem will be presenting from 11 October 2017 to 12 February 2018, closing out the event for Marseille, European Capital of Sport.

Football came to Italy in 1880, imported by British sailors who played the sport in the ports where they stopped. In 1891, the Internazionale Foot-Ball Club Torino was founded by Eduardo Bosio, an Italian merchant specializing in the textiles industry in Great Britain, when he returned to settle in his native region of Turin. However, it was only after the First World War that the sport truly began to spread in the peninsula, supported by its economic development and an increase in free time. The tifoso, which literally translates as a “person with typhus”, began to invade football stadiums. At the turn of the 20th century, typhus was still a widespread illness, whose symptoms were similar to the bearing of a passionate supporter: a cyclical fever state, headaches, torpor and stupor. By extension, tifo designates all the animation at the stadium, and tifoseria, all of a given team’s fans.

At that time, and sometimes under pressure from the political powers that be, the various small city clubs would unite their forces behind the same sense of local belonging. In the larger cities like Rome, Turin and Milan, two teams divided the favours of two factions of antagonistic supporters, giving birth to derbies in the peninsula.

In 1946 Genoa, the Società Ginnastica Comunale in Sampierdarena, founded in 1899, merged with the Società Ginnastica Andrea Doria, founded in 1895, to give rise to the Unione Calcio Sampdoria. That team became the rival of the Genoa Cricket and Football Club, founded by British businessmen in 1893.

In the towns, a single football club would survive. This was the case of Latina, in Lazio Province: built in 1932, at the impetus of Mussolini, under the name Littoria before being rechristened Latina in 1946, one year after the Unione Sportiva Latina Calcio, the city’s football club, was created. A sporting rivalry then developed with the neighbouring town’s club, Frosinone Calcio, some 40 km away.

In Italy, it was only in the 1950s that the first clubs of supporters were truly established, whose memberships would increase substantially in the 1960s. Associations started to stand out for their more exuberant, more active support, with their younger members kitting themselves out with pans, air horns, flags, megaphones and large crates to coordinate the stands’ chants and tifos. At the clubhouse for the Ultras Latina 1972, yellowing photos helped our hosts to remember their history. As our conversation continued, they mentioned a crate of air horns created from reclaimed materials in 1972, which they agreed to loan to the museum for the “We Are Football” exhibition.

In Italy, the major socioeconomic changes of the 1960s were felt in every domain. Youth was at the heart of this upheaval, forming a real age group for the first time, united by the same culture, through music, clothing and leisure, whilst the consumer society made its appearance. Introduced to the rite of the football match by their fathers, young tifosi quickly freed themselves of that tutelage during their adolescence, soon joining with their peers to support their favourites. In a conservative society like Italy was at the time, parents saw them going to the stadium with youths of the same age in a positive light, seeing football as a model of family consumption, far from the rebellious intensity of the urban sub-cultures that were proliferating in Great Britain at the same time, like the Teddy Boys, the Mods and the Rockers. And yet, the Italian youth were changing the experience of a football match, not only by actively supporting their favourite teams, but also by organizing that support on their own.

The Ultras Tito Cucchiaroni (UTC) of Genoa is one of the oldest groups of Italian ultras that are still active today. Its origins date back to the 1969-1970 season, when a group of friends from the Genoan neighbourhood of Sestri Ponente founded the Ultras to support Genoa’s Sampdoria team. The group would later adopt the name of the left winger Ernesto “Tito” Cucchiaroni, who played for Sampdoria from 1959 to 1963, after joining forces with a declining circle of supporters from the Sampierdarena neighbourhood, the Sampdoria Club Tito Cucchiaroni. As underscored by Franck Berteau in his “dictionary of supporters”, the UTC even claim responsibility for coining the term “ultra”, supposedly inspired by graffiti

As the societal phenomenon of the ultra movement was born, beginning in the 1960s, Italy entered a period of intense political conflict dubbed the Years of Lead, during which the country’s youth took a more radical stance against the conservative Italian State. The emancipatory ideals of university students encouraged them to challenge their academic institutions’ authoritarianism, that they then extended by criticizing capitalism, the State, the fatherland, religion and the family. The subversive spirit that was released in the universities, veritable seats of protest, was soon propagated to the public arena, and activists took to the streets and squares. Socially, the situation was characterized by growing unrest and by a profound political crisis. The country was also shaken by a wave of terrorism – the “strategy of tension” – which began in December 1969 with the explosion of a bomb in Milan’s Piazza Fontana that caused 16 casualties.

The political and social climate of those years influenced our young supporters. They no longer wanted to join traditional supporters’ clubs, but rather aspired to create their own organizations. The ultra pioneers adapted characteristics inspired by the small extraparliamentary groups that were then animating the peninsula: the sense of cohesion and camaraderie, conflictuality, and defiance of the powers that be. They stood out for their provocative, violent behaviour toward their political adversaries and anything that might embody the State and its symbols. From the public squares, this spread toward the football stands which became a new stage for expression.

Beginning in the early 1970s, names and symbols from that extremist political sphere became more frequent in the stands, although they were more a source of inspiration and a matter of appropriating names and symbols than the immediate expression of a political culture: for example, the terms “Brigades” and “Commandos” were almost systematically assumed by the ultra groups that were forming throughout the country in the 1970s.

Today, ultra supporters usually proclaim their apoliticism, even though they sometimes take a public position, namely against police repression and the tessera del tifoso, the “supporter’s card” that has been required by the Italian authorities since 2009 in order to better identify the tifosi and strengthen security measures and access controls at stadiums.

The Ultras Tito Cucchiaroni recently did this through a symbolic action in 2013. A t-shirt that the group produced for its members showed a tagger writing the name “ultras” on a wall, a commonplace practice for those supporters when they want to leave their mark on the urban territory. Next to him was a poster reading “Liberta’ per gli Ultras” (“Freedom for Ultras”), a slogan that is typical of the heavily repressed ultra movement. The local authorities considered the shirt to be violent, leading the UTC to make a second t-shirt, almost identical to the first, with a “censored” stamp across the problematic slogan and with

This was the case, for example, of the match between the Croatian team Dinamo Zagreb and the Serbian team Red Star Belgrade that took place at Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb on 13 May 1990 and that lives on in everyone’s memories.

At the Croatian Parliament, Franjo Tuđman had just been elected President of the Republic of Croatia during the first multipartite elections in the history of the country. His plan aimed to create an independent Croatian nation-State within the “natural, historical” borders, namely including a portion of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the Serbian side, Slobodan Milošević, president of the country since May 1989, opposed any disintegration of Yugoslavia and wanted to preserve the borders of the State, within which all Serbs could continue to live “under the same political roof”.

Although the fans’ support for these nationalist plans was not,

Before the war of 1992-1995, Mostar had been the symbol of the Titoist ideal : “Bratstvo, Jedinstvo” (“Fraternity, Unity”) between the peoples and nations of socialist Yugoslavia. According to the last Yugoslav census, taken in 1991, Mostar’s population of 126,600 was one third Bosniak, one third Croat and one fifth Serb (also with a very large proportion of Yugoslavs : 15% in 1981 and 10% in 1991), and its inhabitants bragged that they had the highest rate of mixed marriages in the republic. And yet, one of the bloodiest episodes of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina played out in Mostar.

After the death of Marshal Tito in 1980, and in a context of economic crisis, the Yugoslavian political scene began to

The Fudbalski Klub Velež (Velež Football Club) was founded in 1922 as RSD Velež (Radničko Sportsko Društvo – Workers’ Sports Association). The club borrowed its name from one of the mountains overlooking the city of Mostar, rooting it firmly in its geographic topology. During the Second World War, dozens of members of that club died on the side of the partisans. During the Second Yugoslavia (1945-1992), Velež was part of the country’s revolutionary project and was one of the top clubs in the country, with its greatest success achieved in the 1970s and 1980s. It was mainly known as a symbol of the city of Mostar and of the unity of its citizens, but was beloved and supported beyond the city limits, throughout Herzegovina.

Velež’s original badge was a red star, the symbol of communism, encircled in yellow, containing a football and the words, “RSD Velež Mostar 1922”. Above that emblem was a silhouette of Mostar’s Old Bridge. From 1995 to 2005, the red star was replaced by the bridge on top of a football but, at the request of the Red Army’s supporters, whose group was founded in 1981, the star was reinstated on the badge in 2005. Since the war, some have considered the club to be a Bosniak team, and one of the reasons for restoring the old badge was to mark the continuity between the Yugoslavian Velež and the Velež of today, and to anchor it fully in its heritage. Velež’s supporters are also called Rodjeni (Natives), but that name also designates the club’s players and the club itself.

In the 1970s, Velež began to play at Bijeli Brijeg Municipal Stadium, newly constructed by the citizens of Mostar through collective actions (Radne akcije). That stadium is the second largest in Bosnia and Herzegovina today, after the one in Sarajevo, with a capacity of 25,000, including 9,000 seats. The club ceased to exist in 1992, after it was expelled from its stadium by the Croatian Army during ethnic cleansing actions in the west of the city.

Soon after the expulsion of the Velež Club, Bijeli Brijeg Stadium became the home of the Hrvatski Sportski Klub Zrinjski (Zrinjski Croatian Sport Club) and adopted that club’s name. The club’s management, made up solely of members of Croatian nationality, signed a contract with the municipality – in the hands of a Croat party – for a 110 year lease. Zrinjski is the name of one of the greatest noble families that played an important role during the period of the Croatian battles against the Ottoman army and the Habsburgs. According to the official (albeit contested) history of HSK Zrinjski, the club was founded in 1905, under the Austro-Hungarian occupation, and lasted until 1945 despite a number of interruptions. Given that, during the Second World War, the club played in the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska), an ally of Italy and Germany, and that its managers and players were openly pro-Ustashi, the socialist powers banned it after the Second World War. In 1992, the club was reformed in Medjugorje, a small town outside Mostar.

Zrinjski’s badge is a blue circle containing a white laurel wreath, the red and white Croatian draughtboard, and the words “Zrinjski 1905 Mostar”. The inscription of the date is revelatory of a desire to create historical continuity and to boost its legitimacy and representativeness by presenting itself as the city’s oldest team. That date is challenged by those who consider that the club emerged in 1992, out of violence and war, as the result of a Croat nationalist plan of exclusion and homogenization. The Zrinjski Ultras supporters’ group was founded in 1994 and regularly makes headlines in Bosniak newspapers, which associate it with the Croat far right. Zrinjski’s supporters, who have adopted the eagle as their emblem, call their players Plemići (Noblemen). All these components bear witness to the importance that HSK Zrinjski’s supporters and managers place on their Croat membership⁶.

⁶ For more information, see Stéphanie Rolland, 2013, “De la violence guerrière à l’affrontement symbolique: agonisme sportif et communication interethnique dans les Balkans”, International Journal of Violence and Schools, September 2013, 118-139. In her analysis, she remarks that HSK Zrinjski and its supports defend “an ethno-nationalist identity, a historical reference through the use of the name of a national hero, a symbolic revenge on the communist past of HSK Zrinjski, a right wing orientation and the colour black to represent the ultra supporters who demand an ethnically homogeneous territory (Croat Herzeg-Bosnia)”.

At the derby held on 27 September 2014, which I attended, and during the supporters’ rally that preceded it, there was a very substantial police presence around the stadium and even elsewhere in the city centre, but the supporters and inhabitants alike emphasized that “today is much better”, the situation “has calmed down” and that it was “nothing like the warlike atmosphere that was seen in the first years of the derby”. All the same, many residents feared a major incident, because the elections were about to happen, and any accident that could be interpreted in “ethnic” terms (regardless of the truth of the matter) would benefit the nationalist parties on both sides. Apart from a few seats ripped out, which the stadium’s management donated to the Mucem, and a large quantity of flares along the way, the derby came off with no real hitches. Many supporters of both teams shared comments after the match that could be summarized as follows: “People are expecting blood to be spilled during the match, and when they see that it’s almost a match like any other, they are disappointed and don’t come back”. However, even when there is no “blood” during a match, the tensions felt throughout the city and the property damage caused by supporters outside the stadium, which are repeated each year, are precisely why many refuse to go to the derby, which they consider to be too closely associated with political conflict and which continue to symbolize the city’s political divide.

All the members of the Zrinjski Ultras agreed that, for them, each match was equally important and they needed to give it their all for each one, “but we realize that people are only interested in us for the derby”. They invited me to “come with us to Ljubuški in two days, and you’ll see, the same number of us will be there, with the same flags and the same flares”. Although both clubs’ supporters tried to minimize the importance of the derby, instead emphasizing their “love of the team” and to avoid lending too much interest to the opposing side, football fans and regular citizens did not experience the derby as a “simple match”, choosing not to participate because of the violence and political hijacking that it invokes.