Social movement ruptures and legacies: unpacking the early sedimentation of the anti-European Super League movement in English football

Turner, Mark ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8029-1703 and Millward, Peter (2024) Social movement ruptures and legacies: unpacking the early sedimentation of the anti-European Super League movement in English football. Sociology, 58 (2). pp. 489-506. ISSN 0038-0385

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Abstract

Building on Della Porta’s work on social movement events, critical junctures, and legacies, this article studies the discursive practices, emotions and networks of the instant 48-hour mobilizations of the anti-European Super League (ESL) movement in English football in April 2021. In doing so, we show how this case reveals a new generation of conflict between the different supporter demographic and corporate constituencies that characterize elite football in England, and their politicized temporal structures. Showing how social movement ‘legacy’ operates as a multifaceted concept of power and time, we argue that the ‘puzzling out’ of a new post-ESL regulatory regime in football reveals the tensions between what are considered legitimate, and illegitimate, practices, which characterize the moral economy of the contemporary English football crowd.