How Football Explains the World
An Unlikely Theory of Globalisation
Franklin Foer

“In full throat, they sing in praise of our slaughter. We're up to our knees in Fenian Blood. There are 44,000 of them, mostly Protestant supporters of the Glasgow Rangers Football Club. As this is their home stadium, Ibrox, they can make their songs as virulent as they please. If you hate the fuckin' Fenians clap your hands. We, the 7,000 supporters of Glasgow's traditionally Catholic Celtic Football Club, sit in a separate section of the stadium allocated to visitors, behind the goal. Surrender or you'll die. Although surveillance cameras track every move in Ibrox, it feels as if only a line of policemen in yellow slickers stands as a barricade blocking the home crowd from making good on its songs. With a rifle or a pistol in my hand.

Outside the stadium, thirty minutes to game time, a crowd of Rangers supporters makes a move toward the visitors' entrance. When police on horseback halt their progress, they extend their arms forward in a stiff salute and belt “Rule Britannia”, the anthem of the empire. It goes without saying they believe that Britannia should rule the Celtic stock of Irish Catholics. Compared to the rest of their gestures and songs, this hardly offends. Scattered across the stands, Rangers fans wear orange shirts and hold orange banners to commemorate the ejection of the Catholic monarchy in 1688 by William of Orange, or “King Billy” as they call him. King Billy's modern-day heirs receive their dues as well. Encomiums to the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association, the Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, have been stitched into scarves and written into songs. When Rangers sing, “Hello, hello, we are the Billy Boys,” they are associating themselves with a gang that rampaged against Glasgow's Catholics between the wars. In the 1920s, the Billy Boys established the local affiliate of the Ku Klux Klan.

Matches between cross-town rivals always make for the most combustible dates on the schedule. These rivalries generate the game's horror stories: jobs denied because of allegiance to the foe; fans murdered for wearing the wrong jersey in the wrong neighborhood. Nobody, it seems, hates like a neighbor. But the Celtic-Rangers rivalry represents something more than the enmity of proximity. It is an unfinished fight over the Protestant Reformation.

(...)

In the stadium, the intensity can be gauged without numbers. Across the police line, a pimply pubescent with red hair and an orange jersey furiously thrusts a poster-size Union Jack with his hands. Like winter breath, the bile blows from his mouth. When he screams - Up to our knees in Fenian blood - I'm quit sure that he means it. Right next to him, a man who must be his father sings along.”

Begin van het hoofdstuk How Soccer Explains the Pornography of Sects, over de rivaliteit tussen Celtic en Rangers. Foer schrijft, in de beste traditie van Simon Kuper en Bill Buford, over voetbal als venster op de wereld, van Brazilië tot Bosnië, van Italië tot Iran.