ABSTRACT
The chapter provides the account of political history of Polish football fandom. It depicts the institutionalisation of football at the beginning of the twentieth century which occurred in significantly different circumstances in every partition of Polish territory, then divided among three neighbouring states. After regaining independence, football quickly became yet another arena of political confrontation and divisions within the fandom frequently overlapped with ethnic and political conflicts. During the Second World War practicing of organized sport became strictly forbidden on the territory of Poland occupied by the Third Reich and punished with imprisonment in concentration camps or even the death penalty. Nonetheless, clandestine football competitions were organised in all major cities and became one of the symbolic forms of struggle against the occupier. After the war, as elsewhere in the communist bloc, football was destined to serve the ideological purposes of the dominating ideology. All clubs were owned by state-controlled entities, and the rivalry between them was a proxy for a power struggle between various branches of socialist economy and security forces. Football remained a sport of the masses and – particularly when the national team achieved international successes – a useful tool of propaganda for the regime. The chapter ends with the presentation of a few cases when football became an opportunity for anti-communist manifestations.
