From Social Activism to Active Socialisation: The Evolution of Football Ideology in Community-Owned Football Clubs

Community‐owned clubs are profound socializing agents that offer children a prosocial environment that disarticulates some of football's most pernicious ideologies in favor of an environment that is developmental, empowering, and self‐affirming while facilitating self‐determination. The work highlights the evolution of community‐owned clubs from activist enclaves to virtuous, imperative environments that influence and transfer community‐bound knowledge. Children in the study articulated that the ethos found at these clubs has enhanced their self‐esteem and self‐efficacy and has positively changed their perceptions, behavior, and interactions with the vulnerable individuals within their community. In addition, the data reveals a new idealism in terms of football with self‐restraint and nominal consumption of club apparel preferred to traditional materialism.