Fan Culture as Community in Caracas

I’ve been a serial note-taker all my life. Doodling in the back pages of school exercise books, writing reminders in biro on my hands, and noting down quotes whenever they resonate or affect me profoundly. One of my old bosses was a walking rent-a-quote, a fountain of trivia, a jukebox of nostalgic anecdotes. He was awful at his job and somehow worse at leading, but he had this unacademic knowledge largely made up of his own astute observations and snippets from books he had memorised.

In one of my previously failed attempts of keeping a journal, I noted down something he said about Boris Johnson, who at the time was bumbling his way through his tenure as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: “If you’re beyond parody, you’re safe.” It’s got the balanced sentence structure and appealing repetition that makes a fairly short and mundane quip long-lasting and timeless in the memory.

It’s a phraseology I’ve used personally, in private, to structure some of my core beliefs ever since: and in football, the sport I love passionately, a truth I hold is that if you’re beyond the pitch, you’re timeless. Players come and go, coaches too. In the 21st century even stadiums that have stood for over 100 years are heartwrenchingly replaced with IKEA-like pop-ups at an alarming rate. Shirts change every year, sponsors are on ever-shortening deals even changing midseason (often within a parent brand), and now countless clubs are modifying their badges into circular stock images in the name of appeal and aesthetics.

So what’s beyond the pitch? For me, it’s fan culture. Even more distilled, it’s the matchday experience. Perhaps ironically, nothing is written down, stories trickle from generation to generation by word of mouth, away days are immortalised and embellished by age, and home games are history in the making–nostalgia in formation. And in that spirit, I don’t quote anyone in this article. I tell stories, sure; how they were told to me and…

Source link : https://www.footballparadise.com/fan-culture-as-community-in-caracas/

Author : Jordan Florit

Publish date : 2024-06-13 13:30:00

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