Sports and Identity Politics

The interaction between sports and politics in the new age has become an important issue. Various governments try to take advantages of the capacities as well as opportunities sport provides with different manners. The most important political function of sports, specifically soccer, is to control and direct the public opinion, demonstrate an efficient face of the government and finally to help the process of nation-building. However, soccer has been used not only by national governments, but minorities and ethnic groups also try to take advantage of the high potential of this sport in demonstrating their opposition to the governments and/or strengthening their ethnical convergence. The Islamic Republic of Iran has also taken advantages of the capacity of the national soccer, in some cases, to strengthen the national convergence and identity. This article seeks to present a theoretical analysis over the relationship between sports and politics and it studies a soccer team, the Tabrizi Tractorsazi, based on some mottos and expressions by its political-sport fans and it argues that the Pan Turk racist trend is willing to take advantages of the club soccer to establish a definition of Azeri identity as “the resistance identity” and place it opposed to Iranian national identity.