Paper short abstract:

Taking Egyptian football as an example, this paper explores contesting ideas about what football and fans ought to represent in post-revolutionary Egypt. It also argues that these contestations reflect a generational divide that for many young Egyptians is at the core of the revolutionary process.

Paper long abstract:

In the wake of the 2011 uprising in Egypt, 'generation', 'youth' and ways of being 'modern' have turned into key arenas for discursive contestation. Often, the current political developments are, by young people, framed as a generational conflict, between hopelessly dated, bureaucratic older men who have controlled political, ideological and economic resources for decades, and educated, business-minded shabab (youth), much more in touch with the demands and predicaments of the 21st century.

This paper explores how this struggle is played out in narratives and practices among different groups of Egyptian football supporters. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo, this exploration primarily focuses on how members of the Ultras supporter groups of Egypt's two biggest football clubs Ahly and Zamalek position themselves politically and generationally through practices, discourses and emotionalities. Being almost exclusively in their teens and early twenties, Cairo's Ultras explicitly take a stance against older types of football fandom, which they describe as 'passive', 'unsophisticated' or 'manipulated' by the corrupt, state-sponsored business complex that football was part of under Mubarak. Being an Ultra is in contrast a way of being young, progressive and revolutionary, yet nonetheless nationalist and religious. These narratives of the Ultras do however not pass uncontested, as they face a fierce battle with commentators in the football media and non-Ultras fans alike. What football was, is and ought to be in the new Egypt is hence up for grabs, and tropes about generation, modernity and youth are mobilised by actors from all sides in this struggle.