The murals, the billboards, the graffiti, the colours on the bars and pubs. No two football cities are the same. That cross on the club badge, commemorating a 1st century fisherman martyr (Ajax). The ‘cemetery’ of graves dedicated to the club’s league rivals (Napoli). The guttural roar of fans chanting “Aupa Athletic, aupa Euskal Herria!” – a fierce declaration of Basque pride and identity, echoing through San Mamés like a battle cry (Bilbao).

In a world of increasing corporate and homogenous sport, football cities preserve culture and exhibit the particular and the unique with glorious passion. Fandom in a football city is for everyone: for boys and girls, for elderly men and the infirm; for the fashionable, the outcasts and the hopeless: it gives their days meaning and clarity – it can unite divided cities and divide the otherwise united.

This is Our Game is a celebration of these unique fan cultures. Part travel, part social history, giving voice to distinctive local experiences, revealing the atmospheres, attitudes, fables, fashions, tensions and triumphs of twenty-two unique places and communities across all continents. It was the Russian composer (and FC Zenit fan) Dmitri Shostakovich who said: “Football is the ballet of the masses.” This book takes us inside the dance.