The hijacking of football stadiums: the symbolic dimension of the new arenas and the transnational antifascista turn in fans

Abstract

This article examines the values ​​and meanings attributed by fans to football stadiums in the face of the clashes surrounding the new multipurpose arenas. Based on the experience of Arena Castelão, located in the city of Fortaleza, we investigated how football stadiums are founded as cultural assets that represent a community that gain heritage value. In view of this, the sanding process, by meeting the demands of the market and the capitalist logic of producing profit in the football space, provoked controversies and reactions from different collective groups of fans. As a symptom and effect of hyper-mechanized transformations, this article assesses the emergence of anti-fascist fans in the 21st century in a broader historical framework of the collective models of cheering, expressed through the metaphor of the first, second, third and fourth waves. In this way, using narratives, images and periodicals as historical sources, we suggest understanding the sandstone process as an attempt to kidnap the most genuine values, behaviors, expressions and cultural reference that the football stadiums acquired, reorganization imputed, therefore, by default fans.