From social activism to active socialization: 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.