In recent years, scholars have understood the increasing use of the St George s Cross by football fans to be evidence of a rise in a specifically English identity. This has emerged as part of a wider national response to broader political processes such as devolution and European integration which have fragmented identities within the UK. Using the controversial figurational sociological approach advocated by the twentieth-century theorist Norbert Elias, this book challenges such a view, drawing on ethnographic research amongst fans to explore the precise nature of the relationship between...