What the climate movement can learn from the European football's rebel alliance

How Swedish football's member democracy and supporter movement could inspire climate action.

Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.

A few weeks ago, my local men’s football team Malmö FF, played their first home game in this season of Allsvenskan, the top football league in Sweden. A premier framed by an extraordinary tifo. As the players walked onto the field, three massive, painted curtains were raised to frame supporters in the most active section of the stands, creating the illusion that they were standing in the middle of Möllevångstorget, a nearby square known for its multitude of people, bars and markets - and not the least a common place for demonstrations and manifestations. It’s a place where people unite, from football supporters to politically active to vegetable market vendors. The tifo was not only an impressive visual display, it was a display of how football in Sweden is nurtured by a strong social movement of supporters - one that should inspire climate folks.

The tifo, created and executed by the group MFF Tifosi 96, picturing Möllevången square, framing the supporters. Below is a quote from local singer Mikael Wiehe, that reads “We’ve sung the same songs, we’ve shared the same dreams”

Situation

The football world is far from sustainable. On the contrary it’s heavily nestled in the fossil fuel industry. Tempted by enormous amounts of money, an increasing number of football players are moving to petro states like Saudi Arabia, where the men’s World Cup 2034 will be held. The international football association, FIFA, is sponsored by Coca Cola and Qatar airways. Football players in bigger leagues often lead luxury lives that involves massive consumption and flying. In its development towards what’s commonly called the modern football, it’s become a sport that’s increasingly run by billionaires’ money, where players are sold for astronomic sums and supporters are viewed as consumers of a product rather than humans devoted to loving and supporting their team.

Swedish football is so far an exception to the modern football and has been associated with the classic comic Asterix, who together with his fellow gauls resist the attacks from the roman empire. The last outpost, just as Sweden seems to be one of the last outposts resisting the modern football. Sweden has, due to active member organization, managed to keep the 51% rule, ensuring that all sport clubs to at least 51% are owned by its members. Allsvenskan is the highest ranked football league in Europe that hasn’t implemented video assisted reviewing (VAR), a technology that’s aimed at reducing faulty referee decisions, but that’s heavily criticized both for not being accurate enough and for taking away the live enjoyment of watching the game.

None of this could have been possible without the existence of an active local engagement and grass root organization in the local clubs and amongst supporters that nurtures a strong resistance against the modern football. European football’s rebel alliance, as journalist Daniel Storey calls it. Rebelling against billionaires and resisting development that comes at the cost of the well-being of common people are things that unite the supporter and climate movement. But the supporter movement also offers inspiration that climate groups can learn from.

Explanation

Strengthening community resilience

One of the arguments for keeping the member owned structure of football clubs has to do with what is called place-attachment, sometimes framed as the cognitive-emotional bond that forms between individuals and their important settings. A football team has traditionally been closely tied to a geographic place, with several artefacts that symbolize both the team and its physical place: the stadium, the colors of the team, the history that’s shared between the inhabitants and the team. Things that tie us to a place and make us feel part of it, proud of it and offers a sense of belonging. Place-attachment is associated with benefits such as positive emotions, freedom and practical benefits.

In her dissertation "We can make new history here" Rituals of producing history in Swedish football clubs, Katarzyna Herd has interviewed football supporters about what the bond to a team means, and the importance of authenticity - something that dissipates when clubs are bought up by billionaires who lack the local connection. The possibility of winning more titles cannot make up for the loss of authenticity and soul that clubs have built up through their long histories:

Swedish clubs can make some pragmatic use of their long histories, sometimes longer than 100 years, and they apply those narratives to counterbalance monetary capital with cultural capital. This refers to resources that are not necessarily economic, that one can use while building an image and establishing a position in society. The recurrent theme in the interviews was “money is not enough”.

Place-attachment doesn’t only bring positive emotions, it might also be an important precursor for engagement. We’re more likely to notice changes in a place if we have strong ties to it, but we’re also more likely to care for a place if we have strong ties to it. In his book “Transforming psychological worldviews to confront climate change”, social psychologist Stephan Mayer, argues that people losing their place-attachment makes them less likely to engage in the climate issue, but also less likely to even notice what needs to be protected and how to protect it.

The Malmö tifo visualized the place attachment that many member-owned football clubs actively nurture: the connection between the team, the city and its citizens - all connected, not only by the interest in the sport, but also by their shared geographical place. It’s an attachment that evokes care and love, but also pride.

A question the climate movement need to deal with is how to engage in a global issue where many still experience a certain time-and-place distance, in a way that strengthens one’s place-attachment, not only to the natural world, but to one’s local community.

Sufficiency – ending up with more when rejecting optimization

The resistance against the modern football implies a preference for sufficiency over optimization. Sufficiency is a concept that’s quite frequently referred to in the climate literature as a way of looking at demand side strategies and how we can get people and businesses to suffice with less than the maximum. A kind of “enoughness”. In a systematic literature review of the concept, Jungell-Michelsson & Heikkurinen (2022), notes that:

The notion of sufficiency is particularly linked to questions about human needs and wants and the balance between these two that is just enough for a good life. 

Which resembles the message that Svante Samuelsson from Swedish Elite Football conveys to Daniel Storey:

The Swedish league is the people’s league. This is their league and their football – no Saudi money, no VAR, less nonsense. It’s in their city and it’s their players and they’re watching with their friends. That’s the growing trend.

Money is not enough - on the contrary it seems that the absence of VAR and Saudi money give the Swedish supporters more of both what they want and need for an enjoyable game.

The question of what constitutes a good and enjoyable life, and whether that is dependent on an ever increasing optimization of everything, should lie at the heart of the climate transition. And herein lies a shared similarity between the supporter movement and the climate movement: clearly expressing that there are things more important than money, such as a living supporter culture, a living planet, the feeling of being part of fighting for something together, fighting for something that means everything to you.

Nurturing engagement by finding motivation beyond results

What motivates thousands of people to show up for their favorite team, week after week, even when that team is losing?

I talked to researcher and former sport journalist Axel Vikström (who’s just published a dissertation on the media representation of the super rich) about this, and he said that football supporters somehow has found a way of increasing engagement and willingness to stand by their team when the going gets tough. Even riding on the wave of rough times. It’s a form of loyalty, but also persistence that requires supporters to zoom out and keep faith in the possibility of their team’s capability to eventually turn things around and start winning. This persistence requires motivation that in the short term stretches beyond an immediate attachment to the outcome. When we don’t know at what point in time our wanted change will come, we need to find other ways than seeing immediate change to keep us motivated.

This is an important challenge for the climate movement, both to get new people engaged, and to keep those already engaged motivated long-term. Making motivation rely on whether we “succeed” or not is dangerous when engaged in an issue that has no clear end point and that will encounter both failure and success along the way. We know for a fact that the climate transition will continue to meet rough resistance. In our climate psychology work we often meet people who are frustrated that their engagement is met with scepticism or neglect, since the climate issue “concerns everyone”. At times this frustration takes up a lot of energy, and would probably benefit from finding a way of riding on the wave of rough times, getting energy from others’ resistance and allowing that to nurture one’s own resistance and engagement.

Implementing activities that not necessarily are tied to the outcome of one’s engagement, but increase people’s long-term engagement is essential; when we’re able to have a beer together, strengthen the group’s social bonds, pause and laugh. It’s inspiring to see when climate groups make space for pausing and celebration (for example, the other week Mothers’ Rebellion in Malmö organized a club, just for getting together, dancing and feel joy). Getting people to gather around something that make their hearts race, that’s concrete enough to understand, where you can get help from watching others practice their engagement and start following them. Herd writes about the importance of informal knowledge sharing in the supporter movement:

But this entity has characteristics of a social movement as it requires individual involvement and it attempts to write its own history. There is a huge amount of oral communication, informal knowledge, which helps one to become familiar with the environment, its special features, songs and routines that need to be performed in a specific time and space. It is the ability to produce its own history that results in creating an image, as individual narratives can influence how a group is viewed and evaluated.

The fight against the modern football, like the fight for climate justice, require social movements and finding ways of bringing the power over the larger decisions closer to each and one of us, feeding the experience that we have the power to make a difference. By being part of a social movement people get the opportunity to to practice things that are useful when dealing also with other societal issues: an understanding of how member democracy works, a strategic mobilization of people, cooperation, organization of evenings when you gather to make tifos and signs - and not the least the first hand experience of belonging to something that’s bigger and more important than yourself. To carry and be carried by a collective. This is perhaps why Allsvenskan is doing better than in a long time. It has something that billionaires and technique can’t offer.

And just the other day, the Swedish FA president, who just a year ago said that he thought VAR was the future for Swedish football, backed down and said that we need to respect the decisions made by the member-owned clubs and districts and that they will not bring forward any proposals of VAR future board of representatives meeting. A huge win for member democracy.

Action

The European football’s rebel alliance is invigorating as a concrete example of resistance that prioritizes sufficiency and shows that another path is possible. That a collective can come together to say “No thanks, we’d rather take less money and markets in exchange for feeling something that’s real.”

• Support your local sports team! Especially if it’s a member owned one. Get involved and practice the skills of member democracy, and use that member democracy to also put important climate aspects on the agenda (most football clubs have a lot of work left to do when it comes to sustainability and climate).

• If you’re engaged in a climate group, reflect on how you can strengthen the sense of place attachment, explicitly encourage sufficiency and make these aspects something to be proud of.

• If you’re engaged in a climate group, explore joyous and euphoric emotions, and how celebrations can be integrated into your work.

The climate crisis is here, and we’re seeing its consequences more and more vividly in real time. My tip is that a member based structure with an active supporter movement has a better chance at thriving as the climate crisis becomes even more acute, than anything the modern football can offer.

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