From Pitches To Personalities.
Exposing the Gap Between Football Stadiums and a Progressive Society
Beauty or Brutality
When the whole stadium stands up, stands together, to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, those are moving moments of football. We could use a lot more unity like that in society regarding other topics, I believe. Strangers hugging, singing loudly, cheering - a created sense of belonging.
But I also grew up with the other side of football: one that makes me question my support for it and dislike many parts of it, and one that mirrors where society is still stuck in the day before yesterday.
Loud men shouting racist comments towards players. Sexist jokes being labelled as “boys being boys”. Beer-throwing and displays of dominance. Rivalries no longer played but lived, taken so seriously they are made reality. Little boys copying behaviour - of dads, of fans, of players. Pitch invasions and pyrotechnics; using football as an outlet for violence, as an excuse for aggression. As a justification for hate. Money, money, money. Making everything out of it except the game of football itself.
The meaning and essence of the sport? Sadly, in many ways, no longer what it is about.
Online, in day-to-day life and in many public spaces, we get the idea that society is progressing. Inclusion and empowerment are increasing even in spaces where such values used to face resistance. For the sake of the argument, let’s set aside Andrew Tate, tradwives, MAGA, and everything else that keeps reminding us that this progress is fragile and reversible.
But go to the stadium on a Saturday afternoon, and you’ll quickly be overwhelmed by the normality of toxic masculinity. These behaviours are tolerated, accepted and legitimised. They are defended in the sacred language of tradition and heritage.
How so? Why do they continue to exist with so little opposition? When countered or confronted, what you get back is always the same, the laziest justification of any injustice: “It’s always been this way”, “that’s football”, “get over it”. And that’s that, the conversation ends. Patriarchy continues.
My diagnosis is simple: memory is not innocent. It is used to justify and reproduce these outdated ideals. From pitches to personalities, toxic masculinity is deeply embedded in the world of football. But how does memory do this?
Ideals and Imitation
What we define as masculinity is not an average. It is an ideal - a set of traits men learn to measure themselves in relation to. Pride, toughness, dominance. It survives not because it is natural, but because it is reproduced and reinforced every day, becoming so familiar that they begin to look self-evident. They are not. They are simply old ideas copy-pasted.
Men benefit from the system, whether or not they wish to embody it.
And football sets the stage. Players become idols. Idols become templates. You see it in small things: little boys copying a celebration, a haircut, a pose after scoring a goal - learning early the rituals of conformity. They are not just learning how to play. They are learning how to perform.
And yet none of this is fixed. Hegemony, like all norms it maintains, changes over time. The problem is not that these ideals exist. The problem is that we keep mistaking them for nature.
Memory is not purely individual. It is something we build together. It is social. Over time, it becomes collective cultural memory: a society’s self-image, its habits, its sense of what is normal. In football, this memory lives in repetition like chants, stories and club legends; in things done so often that they start to feel given. Because what is repeated becomes tradition. And what is tradition becomes difficult to question. Football itself is entwined with history; born in an age of empire and imperialism; where feminism was still below a whisper.
Like magic, these ideals and behaviours are passed on, while any criticism is brushed aside in the name of culture and heritage. Untouchable.
Ritual To Rule
We now know that the inside of a football stadium functions as a ritual in which masculinity is performed: a way in which culture protects itself, defends itself, and keeps itself in place.
Politics is everywhere people are. That’s why calling football “apolitical” is part of the problem. Football is not just a mirror of society; it is a force. Demanding otherwise is a way of pretending that what is being rehearsed here has no consequences.
This does not look the same everywhere. It changes from club to club and from stand to stand. Noise is not the problem; stadiums should be loud. Passion is the point; emotion is part of the sport. There is a distinct difference between intensity and exclusion, between tradition and standing still.
Football teaches, it rewards, it normalises. It has agency. It has power. It is one of the places where society is actively made, and therefore one of the places where it can be changed.
Memory is alive, it is a tool to shape the present.
That is why these rituals matter. And it is also why they can be changed. They are not laws of nature. They are arrangements. They exist because they are upheld.
This is not a fantasy. It is already happening. There are clubs, there is women’s football, there are other sports that have shown that tradition can be built differently:
Women’s football shows us that it doesn’t have to be this way. The sport is the same, but the atmosphere around it is not.Not because women are “naturally” different, but because this space isn’t built on the same hunger to prove worth in outdated forms. Maybe that’s also because the sport rose later; it grew under different conditions and follows different norms. You can see it in what is allowed to be visible. In men’s leagues openly gay players, for example, remain an extremely rare exception, whereas in women’s this is simply part of the ordinary. The comparison is uncomfortable because it exposes the illusion.
This is not to romanticise women’s football. It is still marginalised and shaped by the same masculinities and structures I’m addressing, still marked by discrimination to this day.
Still, if football culture were simply an expression of human nature, both spaces would look the same. They don’t. Which means what we call “football culture” in the men’s game is not fate. It is repetition. It is memory. It is a choice that has been made so often it now looks like “just the way it is”.
If we want society to change, we ought to tackle the spaces that resist that change the longest. If pride flags and feminism were truly uncontroversial, they would not need protection.
Patriarchal structures and norms are not natural. They are produced.
What’s missing isn’t possibility, but reason and will.
Enough diagnosis. What about practice?
Both for individuals and institutions, determination, not theory, makes change possible.
Change begins with calling out sexist jokes, imposing real sanctions for misbehaviour and making reporting easy and safe. Change happens when “atmosphere” is no longer treated as an excuse. What is needed is speaking, inspiring and educating in football clubs and youth squads; leading by example towards an atmosphere all can enjoy. It means building movements within fandoms and raising boys to understand the difference between passion and fanaticism. It means changing what masculinity means and learning about the history of violence and exclusion, not just trophies. It means paying attention to the actual football, without glorifying theatrical performances on the pitch.
Rewrite the script.
Author: Ella Roth
“Ella’s Take On” is a space to explore whatever concerns, shapes, breaks or inspires us. From everyday thoughts to bigger questions, anything goes. Ella’s little collection of pieces and perspectives that invite reflection, curiosity, and conversation.