Abstract

This paper examines the case of Spartak Lecce, a popular football team founded in 2013, which uses sport as a tool of social and political resistance. Through Michel de Certeau’s theoretical framework, the analysis investigates the transition from tactical practices of resistance to structured strategies, highlighting the role of Spartak Lecce in the construction of alternative and inclusive spaces of aggregation. Based on a qualitative methodology, the work shows how popular football promotes models of collective participation and generates new forms of political and community consciousness, representing a critique of neoliberal and commodificationist logics.

Introduction

This article aims to analyse the case of Spartak Lecce (SL), a popular football team founded in 2013, which has represented, for over a decade, a social, cultural, and political laboratory within the context of Italian popular football. Grounded in the principles of anti-racism, grassroots self-organisation, and solidarity, SL is not merely a sports team but a collective project that leverages sport as a tool to build community, resist neoliberal logics, and reclaim alternative social and symbolic spaces.

The objective of this study is to explore how popular football, practised in a horizontal and inclusive manner, can emerge as a critical response to the commodification of sport and the fragmentation of contemporary society. The analysis is anchored in Michel de Certeau’s (2001, 2011) theoretical framework, particularly his concepts of tactics and strategies. De Certeau distinguishes tactics as adaptive practices employed by subordinate groups to create spaces of manoeuvre within dominant systems, from strategies, which involve structured approaches that rely on the control of autonomous resources and spaces. From this perspective, the experience of SL offers a significant case study to examine the transition from initial tactical practices—aimed at creating spaces of sociality and collective resistance—to more structured strategies capable of exerting a tangible influence on the surrounding social and political context.

The article is structured into three main sections. The first section contextualises the historical and social dynamics leading to the creation of SL, focusing on the connection between social movements and popular football. The second section delves into a sociological and political analysis of the project, investigating its practices of resistance, shared values, and the role of its militant core in shaping collective identity. The third section reflects on the shift from resistance tactics to established strategies, highlighting how SL has evolved into a structured model of social and political action.

This study aims to contribute to the sociological discourse on the role of sport as a social and political practice, employing De Certeau’s framework to analyse the dynamics of resistance and transformation. In this light, SL emerges as a representative case for understanding the potential of popular football in fostering alternative collective spaces and promoting models of social participation oriented towards critique and change.

Sport as a social and political practice: popular football between resistance and re-appropriation of spaces

In his study on the multidimensional nature of sport, Nicola Porro (2006, p. 26) points out that: “sport is ambiguous and multidimensional by definition”. With this observation, the author urges both scholars and interested observers to consider sport from different and complementary perspectives. In this paper, one of these perspectives will be analysed, the ‘popular’ one, understood as the use of sporting activity from a social-political perspective. As Milan (2019) notes, popular sport represents a social practice that reinterprets sport as a community activity in the context of contemporary society. Although it may seem anachronistic to speak of popular sport as an emerging or innovative phenomenon, especially in relation to football, this label takes on a peculiar meaning. The reference is not to the interclass characteristics that have historically characterised football passion, capable of involving billions of individuals, both as practitioners and spectators, globally. Rather, it focuses on the intention to use sport as a means to create spaces of private life and collective aggregation. These spaces aim to preserve their autonomy from the logic of profit and commodification, reaffirming the social and community value of sporting activity.

In the introduction to Davide Ravan’s book Il Calcio è del Popolo (2019, p.8), Andrea Ferreri, one of the first scholars in Italy to deal with popular football, states the following:

“Football is by its very nature popular, in the sense that it has embraced all social classes and especially the less affluent. Since it came out of England’s elite schools, it has slipped into the working-class neighbourhoods of the world and become an object of worship. A sort of religion that has fuelled the imagination of millions. An imaginary, today, increasingly polluted by toxic, exasperating narratives, where divism and commercialisation of emotions are preponderant. Great football has become for many the new opium of the people, the panem et circenses of modern times, where sport/entertainment is an instrument of mass distraction and manipulation. Where the community is alienated and rendered incapable of acting by what are the real emergencies: economic crises, political and social problems. To this increasingly Orwellian model of sport, popular football reacts, a new model that seeks to undermine the very foundations of the concept of ownership, reversing course and attempting to make a club, a team, something that belongs to a community and has social value”.

This somewhat romantic response to the commodification and transformation of sport into a consumer product invites us to interpret popular football as a form of sport-political tactics and strategy. This practice allows subjects in a subordinate position to resist adverse contexts, cope with unfavourable situations and regain social space and power that has been denied them (de Certeau, 2001). The popular dimension of sport thus lies in its capacity to configure and manifest a ‘different sport’, capable of generating interpersonal relations and social dynamics that stimulate a political consciousness oriented towards social issues rather than distracting from them (Benvenga, 2021).

Objectives and Methods

As anticipated in the introduction, the investigation focuses on the analysis of the SL as a form of resistance to dominant logics, using the theoretical concepts of tactics and strategy formulated by de Certeau (2001). In particular, the team is examined both as an expression of opposition to the set of dominant forces and representations, exploiting the margins of manoeuvre allowed by the established order, and as a promoter of a ‘liberated space’ that lies outside this order (Polletta, 1999).

The methodology adopted is based on a qualitative analysis of the daily practices and aggregation and socialisation strategies promoted by the SL. The study makes use of the analysis of secondary sources and interviews with privileged witnesses to examine the processes of collective construction and the values shared by the SL community. In particular, five in-depth interviews were conducted to explore in detail the experiences along the participatory pathway, highlighting the meanings attributed by the participants to these dynamics. To ensure privacy and due to the sensitivity of some statements, the interviewees chose to remain anonymous. In line with what has been argued by several scholars (Thompson, 1995; Wood, 1995; Modonesi, 2014; Cox, 2018; Gilmore, 2022), the notion of experience is central to understanding the dialectic between agency and process, illuminating the ambivalence of human experiences within objective material conditions. In this perspective, experience is interpreted as a process – a form of experimentation – that connects social being and social consciousness, representing a synthesis in the constitution of subjectivity (Modonesi, 2014). In particular, the analysis focused on the ways in which football, practised in a horizontal and inclusive form, is configured as an instrument of everyday resistance. This practice proves capable of generating connections between heterogeneous subjectivities and acting as a means for the ‘conquest’ of alternative social and symbolic spaces. This perspective allows us to place SL within a broader framework of critique of neoliberalism, emphasising its role in favouring aggregative models and processes of collective growth, which challenge dominant logics and promote forms of emancipative sociality.

The analysis focuses on the militant core of the SL, composed of about ten individuals who are active on a daily basis and have an in-depth knowledge of the internal dynamics of the various components of the project, such as the supporters, the extended community and the team group. This core represents the organisational and ideological engine of the SL, assuming a key role in the definition and practice of the core values of grassroots football. The opportunity to investigate this intimate dimension – often inaccessible to scholars – was made possible through my direct participation in the SL project. For over five years, in fact, I was able to actively insert myself into the group dynamics, experiencing from the inside the practices and processes that characterise the reality of popular football. This opportunity allowed me to overcome what Sherry Ortner (1995) defines as ‘ethnographic refusal’, that is, the difficulty of accessing themes or contexts that participants choose not to share with the outside world, especially when it comes to resistant or conflictual practices. Furthermore, in line with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (2012) assertion, this direct access was made possible through the building of relationships based on trust and reciprocity, which are fundamental to exploring marginalised spaces that often remain excluded from traditional modes of academic research.

The militant core of Spartak Lecce

The militant core of the SL consists of a small group of about ten individuals who are actively involved in the day-to-day running of the project and possess a thorough knowledge of the internal dynamics involving the different components of the community, including the supporters, the team group and the wider community network. This core group plays a central role, both organisationally and ideologically, assuming a decisive role in defining and implementing the core values of grassroots football.

With some exceptions, the group is not distinguished by interclass characteristics, but is united by a popular background and a political path linked to antagonist militancy. The social marginality that characterises these individuals is not only a distinctive element, but a lens through which to interpret their daily practices as forms of resistance to the dominant culture and, more generally, to the condition of political subalternity. This marginality reflects the historical positioning of the world of militant antagonism, which is rarely recognised or valued in public space.

For the members of the militant core, many of whom are also athletes, popular football represents much more than a simple sporting activity. It becomes a means to create spaces of sociability and participation, capable of fuelling dynamics of social and political struggle. In this perspective, football is not just a game, but a tool through which to build community, claim rights and challenge dominant power structures. Most members, in addition to actively participating in the practices and dynamics that characterise the maintenance, development and growth of the socio-political project of the SL, weave social relationships that extend beyond the football context. Friendliness, in this case, is configured as a true form of social capital (Bourdieu, 2018), representing a fundamental resource for strengthening support networks and internal cohesion within the project. These ties, based on trust and reciprocity, play a crucial role in facilitating the coordination of collective initiatives, promoting their dissemination and consolidating the legitimacy of the project even outside the football context (della Porta, Diani, 2006).

The birth of Spartak Lecce: from roots to social context

The genealogy of popular football in Italy, and of the SL in particular, is systematically documented in the work of Davide Ravan (2019, p.34), a football scholar and sports enthusiast. In the book, under the heading ‘Spartak Lecce’, we read:

“Spartak Lecce was born from the experience of Calcio Senza Confini, a 9-a-side football tournament against all forms of racism and discrimination. It was in 2009 when we played the first edition of a tournament that would grow over the years to 28 participating teams and more than 500 players. And all this with the sole force of self-organisation from below, practising anti-racism and social inclusion starting from a football pitch. Three years later, the idea of a popular football team was developed during the afternoons of the tournament, in order to bring those values and that kind of football into a federal context; the choice of the name, in fact, is not accidental: Spartak comes from Spartacus, the slave who led the revolt against the power of Rome.”

As stated in the reconstruction offered by Ravan (2019), SL emerges as a spin-off project, conceived within a broader context aimed at rethinking football and its socio-cultural significance. This project aims to free sport from the institutionalised and commodified logics in which it is traditionally embedded, promoting instead football as a social practice that fosters solidarity, interaction, psycho-physical well-being, community building, inclusive competition and recreational pleasure. However, before finding an actual realisation, the idea of starting a popular football team remains in the pipeline for about three years. The SP is formally constituted in 2013, in a period marked by deep reflection and widespread disorientation within national and local movement realities. This context is characterised by the repression of the altermondialist movement, the failure of the 2008-2011 protest cycle and the social disintegration generated by the economic crisis. These dynamics push many collective actors to reconsider the ways of doing politics and building moments of collectivity. The growing difficulty in mobilising the squares and the declining interest in engaged participation, outside of strictly personal interests, become central themes of discussion and reflection in movement assemblies (Bosi, Zamponi, 2019). The main causes of this political stagnation and fragmentation are identified in the social deterioration caused by the economic crisis and in the sometimes disproportionate focus on the ideological assumptions of political action. Faced with the inadequacy of traditional patterns of militancy, the need to adopt new practices, postures, languages and watchwords emerges. As Bosi and Zamponi (2019, p. 172) point out, “there is a widespread idea among these collective actors that social disintegration has undermined the basis for political participation and that it is not possible, therefore, to relaunch the latter without addressing the former”.

In this scenario, popular football is configured as an innovative and original experience, capable of reconstructing social ties and stimulating renewed collective participation. SL not only fits in fully, but in some ways also takes on a leading role, configuring itself as one of the first realities in Italy to propose an answer – dropped into the world of sport – to what Pizzorno has called ‘surplus participation’. A type of participation that responds to the need to do something for others and the need to do things to give meaning to one’s own life. Particularly interesting from this point of view are the considerations of a team member:

“The last topical moment was Genoa, from Genoa onwards, in a certain sense the international strength that had found the movement up to that moment, linked to the struggles of the summits at the G8, at the G20, was exhausted. […] Today we have always reproduced, even with delay, what were the national dynamics. Today when national dynamics are also weak, what do we have to reproduce? So we specialise with the world of popular football, with leagues, tournaments, our own things, small worlds. Since there aren’t many places of conflict we try to create them, to create spaces that are liberated, we always try to get busy to keep values alive and give meaning to ourselves.” (Interview 1)

This reflection highlights how SL represents not only a sporting project, but a laboratory of social and political experimentation that responds to the crisis of traditional forms of participation, seeking to build a new active and aware community. In this context, football becomes a catalyst for processes of social and political subjectivation, through which individuals develop greater critical awareness, more active participation and more concrete solidarity towards the community. (Bosi, Zamponi, 2019).

Theoretical framework: tactics and strategy in subaltern practices

The concept of resistance through everyday practices finds a solid theoretical framework in Michel de Certeau‘s The Practice of Everyday Life (2011). The French scholar analyses the ways in which ordinary individuals negotiate and resist power structures through everyday actions often considered marginal or insignificant. As Pitti (2018) states, through the concepts of tactics and strategy, de Certeau shows how subaltern classes elaborate creative ways to adapt to and oppose domination, developing practices, attitudes and behaviours capable of reformulating or subverting existing power relations. This approach highlights the transformative potential of everyday practices in contesting institutionalised logics of power.

Both concepts refer to modes of action that seek to transform the established order or create a liberated space within it, exploiting cunning, incursions and twists.

According to De Certeau (2011), tactics represent ‘a calculation that cannot rely on a basis of its own, nor therefore on a frontier that distinguishes the other as a liveable totality. Tactics has as its place only that of the other. It creeps in, in a fragmentary way, without grasping it in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance. It does not have a base on which to capitalise its advantages, prepare to expand and guarantee independence in relation to circumstances’ (De Certeau, 2001, p. 15). In other words, tactics are the tool of the weak, of those who, in a hostile context, are forced to move through expedients to gain margins of manoeuvre and spaces of freedom.

Strategy, on the contrary, implies “the calculation of power relations that becomes possible from the moment when a subject of will and power can be isolated in an environment. It presupposes a place that can be circumscribed as its own and serve as the basis for a management of its relations with a distinct exteriority’ (De Certeau, 2001, p. 15). Strategy, therefore, is the typical action of those in power, as it allows for greater control and the ability to affect power relations more directly. However, for De Certeau (2011), the tactics of subaltern subjects can evolve into strategies when they are systematised into collective actions, creating a solid base from which to confront dominant structures.

Within this theoretical framework, the history of the SL can be read as an emblematic example of the shift from tactics to strategy. Through the creation of its own space, the SL has not only defined a physical and symbolic place from which to operate but has also built a social and political network that allows for a more structured and effective management of relations with the outside world. This evolution reflects the capacity of popular football to transform itself from a practice of everyday resistance to a form of collective action with a broader strategic vision.

Spartak Lecce as a political and social project

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the path leading to the foundation of the SL stems from a condition of social and political marginality, which played a crucial role in motivating the creation of initiatives capable of giving life to a new popular football experience. The SL promoter group is composed of young and old from diversified experiences in the world of political antagonism, ultras culture, punk subculture and situations of social marginality. These are joined by student components, often lacking spaces of expression both within university institutions and in the urban fabric.

The testimony of a group member highlights the project’s impact on identity and social construction:

“I approached Spartak because I obviously like playing football and have always played football. However, I was also looking for a way to feel engaged on other fronts. At university there were various politically active groups but I didn’t recognise myself with their practices and ways of doing politics. […] Look, the thing I can tell you is that there, finally, I found my own identity, I felt at ease and I recognised myself with the values that those people were trying to spread and preserve’ (Interview 2).”

This experience reveals how SL functions not only as a sporting space, but also as a tactic to manage the condition of subalternity. For many members, popular football has become a vehicle to express political and social values, as confirmed by another interviewee:

“Being part of Spartak means becoming a vehicle for clear values, which are clear from the very beginning. […] You couldn’t find space and we had to find space in the end” (Interview No. 3).