Supporter culture in Denmark: the legacy of the ‘World’s Best Supporters’

Abstract

Soccer in Europe has been on a harmonization route alongside the development and enlargement of today’s European Union. Especially within soccer fan culture surprisingly more common European features appear in behaviour, mainly due to the expanding international television coverage of top European matches. The suggested current pan‐European soccer fan culture is seen as a micro‐level approach to globalization, and what this essay will trace and document are some of the visible common traits of fan behaviour among football spectators throughout Europe, with reference mainly to the Danish scene. When the Danish national team supporters, later known as the Roligans, were awarded the UNESCO Fair Play Trophy after the European Championships in France in 1984, the Danish media titled them ‘the World’s Best Supporters’. Since then, a different and much stronger club supporter presence has been established and this change of the national supporter scene is analysed with a historic, social and pan‐European focus

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