Reinventing and reclaiming football through radical fan practices? NK Zagreb 041 and Futsal Dinamo

Abstract

This article focuses on fan responses to problems which professional football currently faces in Croatia. There is a high level of dissatisfaction with the Croatian Football Association (Hrvatski nogometni savez) among fans, alongside increasing anger and dissatisfaction that the media portray fans in a negative light. This paper focuses on two fan run initiatives in Zagreb – the first based on participatory and the second on direct democratic principles – to illustrate some of the methods fans have used to protest against the current situation and offer alternatives. The first section of the paper is focused on GNK Dinamo Zagreb’s Bad Blue Boys, describing fan practices deployed in the battle with Dinamo’s administration, with a focus on the phenomenon of Futsal Club Dinamo. The second section considers the fan run club NK Zagreb 041, which was partly formed by members of the White Angels, a small Zagreb based group with a left wing platform, who used to support NK Zagreb. We discuss the context that led to the formation of these two clubs, their organizational structure, fans practices in contemporary Croatian society and symbolic aspects relating to these newly formed clubs.