ABSTRACT
Having outlined the history of Association football, I now want to turn attention to the micro level of contemporary football: the audience, spectator, supporters and fans. Etymologically the word ‘fan’, as well as its academic derivative ‘fandom’, derive from the word fanaticus, the Latin word for a member and devotee of a temple. The word ‘fan’ (initially ‘fann’ or ‘phan’) emerged as an abbreviation of the word ‘fanatic’ in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) defines ‘fan’ as follows:
A fanatic; in modern English [orig. US]: a keen and regular spectator of a [professional] sport, orig. of baseball; a regular supporter of a [professional] sports team; hence, a keen follower of a specified hobby or amusement, and gen. an enthusiast for a particular person or thing.
