ABSTRACT
This chapter presents several examples of clubs specifically set up in response to what are seen as unacceptable levels of infringement by the market into football: grassroots football clubs and their intervention into a game in danger of becoming uncoupled from the local communities it took firm foundation in. It focuses on community-based football clubs; specifically, not-for-profit organizations whose members approach their involvement in football from an anti-consumerist and anti-commercial perspective. Considers football clubs whose founders seek a clean break with profit making from football which has, from their perspective, led to the alienation of local communities from the game, organisations, then, which attempt to seize back the control of the game on behalf of communities by setting up not-for-profit football clubs It then turns to football clubs formed by social and political activists, often as part of a broader organisational structure established at local level.
