ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on “football governance” and “football fandom” as two domains, which substantially broaden and enhance our understanding of European integration dynamics. It highlights key empirical insights from two recent, large-scale comparative research projects on the Europeanisation of football. Quite a broad range of approaches have been used to conceptualise the role of football with regard to the European integration process. Football, again, seems to provide a fertile ground to study such “banal” identifications with Europe in a lifeworld context. The project Football Research in an Enlarged Europe arguably set a new standard for investigation of the power of football in impacting societies and eventually contributing to the further integration of Europe. As Europeanisation of football results indicate, identity formation among football fans is a spatial process in which both the Europeanisation of football and the locality of the clubs play a huge role.
