ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on European football and on every day, ordinary, or casual football fans in Cyprus and their symbolic communication and behavior in-field and in other contexts. In Cyprus, the development of football was based on the transfusion of political or ideological differences that go back to the period before the island's attempt to shake off British colonialism in 1955–1959. The chapter suggests that for many fans, such as those studied, fandom and the associated in-field communicative behavior is form of identity display and of participation in a festivity whereby they unwind and escape from everyday life. Sport fandom, as are most types of fandom, is both private realities experienced at deep psychological and emotional levels, and a social phenomenon manifested and expressed publicly amongst communities of fellow fans and/or anti-fans. Sports fans are conceived here as ordinary people who seek outlets to sport and sport attendance and use symbolic practices to express their attachment and social identity.
