Soccer Fandom Culture as A New Form of Cultural Heritage

Soccer is known as a kind of cultural heritage such as other forms of sports. In this respect, Iranian sport heritage can be divided in to two forms of primordial-ancient and contemporary-new sport heritages.  The first category comes in to view in some sports such as polo (Chogan) and Wrestling and the second one emerges in some new forms such as Iranian soccer that has been localized through Iranian cultural contexts and history. One very important aspects of soccer in modern era and societies includes fandom culture. Soccer History falls in to two periods of before and after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Anthropological study of sport argues on the evolution of sport history as a key aspect and issue. In this article, the authors scrutinize the relationship between state management of soccer and fandom culture that has sometimes led to emergence of conflicts before Islamic revolution. As such, In order to answer the question about the relation between state management and fandom culture, Iranian soccer history is divided in to three periods including 1960-1967, 1967-1972, 1972-1979 in this duration of time.