A new study published in the journal Psychology of Sport & Exercise has examined the impact of club representation in the national team on fans.
The authors created a new experimental procedure to examine how a person’s local relational ties, such as loyalty to a football club, shape a person’s broader, ‘extended’ ties, such as connection to the national football team.
Identity fusion describes a psychological state in which personal and social identities are deeply aligned, fostering strong bonds with a group and influencing attitudes and behaviours, including in international contexts.
The study investigated this concept of identity fusion among almost 400 Turkish football fans using an experimental design to test whether local club representation in the national team influences national team fusion and behavioural intentions toward other fans.
Fans viewed lineups for an upcoming international match that included either more of their local club's players or their rival's and found that national team bonding dropped when rival club players were overrepresented. Equally, with more players from a participant’s preferred local club represented, the more support they offered the national team.
This study highlights how layered group identities interact — and how rivalries at one level can ripple out to affect cohesion at another.
One of the authors of the research, Dr Martha Newson, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich suggested:
“We hope that national teams and FIFA take note of these findings and find ways to help bring fans together through representative team selection; clearly, we want the best players on national teams but with that comes a need also to have local clubs and other elements of identity well-represented. We believe this will lead to more peaceful behaviours within football”.
Author Dr Aytaç of Aksaray Universitesi commented:
"Our research provided a meaningful contribution to Identity Fusion theory, specifically concerning the concept of extended fusion. The context here is key: Türkiye has an exceptionally intense derby rivalry-the Galatasaray vs. Fenerbahçe matches consistently rank in the global top five derbies.
"Given that high-stakes environment, it was critical for us to investigate inter-group and ingroup attitudes."
