My team is not my religion, but for some, it is

Soccer politics/religion has recently been studied in a new book by Franklin Foer. An interesting section of the book deals with Scotland.

Foer writes of the rivalry between Glasgow's predominantly Catholic-supported Celtic and mostly Protestant-supported Rangers (a Scotsman once refused to tell me which team he supported, claiming I was trying to ascertain his religion): "The city has kept alive its soccer tribalism, despite the logic of history, because it provides the city with a kind of pornographic pleasure."

Amazing, and to me, otherworldly. I am quite sure that is not the only place in the world were one's team affiliation denotes other things like, class, religion, even gang ties.

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, , New York: HarperCollins