The object is a football scarf in the colors blue, white, and black. In the center, a pictogram of a policeperson holding up a baton is superimposed by an interdiction sign (a circle and a diagonal line). On both sides, the number 1312 appears—which, by substituting each number for the corresponding letter of the alphabet, reverts to the more recognizable ACAB ‘All cops are bastards’. It was handpicked by its owner, Peter, who has created what he calls “his own museum of football” in the top room of his cellar.
In the center of the room, there is a 3D reproduction of the Ullevi Stadium of Gothenburg, where Peter’s team, IFK Göteborg, plays. Surrounding it, hundreds of football jerseys and scarves from clubs around the world are organized by color gradient in two rows—jerseys on top, scarves on the bottom. They were either acquired by Peter himself or gifted to him by friends and acquaintances. More or less serendipitously, the place became a collective repository of football related stuff, an informal archive that anchors an international network of fans. More scarves hang from the ceiling, and flags of all sizes cover the walls. A glass display case with several shelves holds personal pieces of memorabilia: a football ticket that had belonged to Peter’s father, pieces of rubble from two old stadiums, various pamphlets from different matches and events dating from the last few decades. There is a bar and high stools in the corner where Peter served us hot dogs and beer to recreate the real “football stadium experience.”
Football supportership occupies a paradoxical role in many contemporary societies. Sometimes depicted as a tool for integration and inclusion, with the potential to promote a sense of belonging and foster individual participation, football support—particularly as it is practiced by Ultra groups—is also frequently described as deviant and potentially dangerous. It is viewed as a disruption to norms that must be tamed and policed—in the literal sense. As a result, a significant part of football Ultra fan culture in Sweden (where Peter lives), as elsewhere, revolves around a mutually antagonizing rapport with the police.
Hence, 1312.
As the most fervent of football support groups, Ultras create impressive atmospheres in and out of the stadium, which involve chants, yells, claps, pyrotechnics, tifos... These are momentary, irreplicable performances, full of hidden or subliminal messages, the impact of which is indexed to their excessiveness and exuberance. Most would agree (Peter included) that Ultra groups play defiantly with the limits of legality and challenge (at least) the most stringent notions of public order. For this reason, Ultra groups are perhaps too transgressive to enter the more established, state-sanctioned archives, even as football support is increasingly recognized as a human activity deserving of being heritagized (both in specialized museums and more general ones).
That is why Peter— to whom football is identity, community, heritage, politics and everything in between— keeps this object in his own marginal archive. Which is also (in part) an archive of marginality.
Story by Carolina Valente Cardoso.
Carolina holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Gothenburg, where she is currently a postdoctoral researcher. Her work explores postcolonial North–South migrations, the pedagogical potential of museum collections, and the politics of football fandom..