The Story of Casual Culture

“First come the Teds, then the Mods, Rockers, Hippies, Skindheads, Suedeheads and Punks. But by the late seventies, a new youth fashion had appeared in Britain. Its adherents were often linked to violent football gangs, wore designer sportwear and made the bootboys of previous years look like the dinosaurs they were. They were known as scallies, Perry Boys, trendies and dressers. But the name that stuck was casual.” this quote was taken from book named Casuals and this quote can give as an information about what casual culture is. Based on the quote, we know that young people in England have many cultures and it always evolving from time to time. One similarity from those cultures is the connection with football, the country most popular sport.

            Football is the most popular sport in the entire world, because of that, football can have a big impact on the society. From the players, coaches, until fans. For football fans, supporting their football club is mandatory and sacred. Even, there is a word that say “football without fans is nothing” and it is true, fans are the core for this sport and industry. Of course, every football fan in the world have their own way to support their club, including England, country where football coming from. In the late seventies in England, new football fans culture appeared, and they named themselves as “casual”. 

            The boys were wearing a designer track top, straight jeans, and trainers, they also wear high end brands such as Adidas, Lacoste, Lyle & Scott, Fila, and Ellesse. This “new fashion” culture clearly not represent football fans in England in that time, because back then football was a sport for the working-class people and clearly the fans could not afford all those designer brands. The culture itself is not only about the fashion, it also contains attitude because this culture has a strong link with football hooliganism that has been known first. Before the “casual” appear, most of the hooligans were a skinhead, they like to wear bomber jacket, jeans, boots, and listening to punk music. Police can easily track the hooligans based on what they wear, and police can easily ban them from a match to prevent a violence inside the stadium. Many people believe that it was the reason why the boys dress with expensive brands or they called themselves as “casual”, because they want to avoid the police attention.

And the question is, where was this culture started? Many people have their own opinion about this, they claimed that their city was the first city who started this culture first. Big cities such as Liverpool, London, and Manchester were the top three cities in England that claimed as the first city with casual culture on it, and also followed by the small cities across the UK. In the late seventies, there was a European Cup (cup between European clubs) and it allow the fans to travel abroad in order to support their club away. Liverpool FC was the team that represent England in that competition. There were many Liverpool FC fans that traveled to Italy to watch Liverpool FC there. They come back with designer brand clothes that they stole from the shops that is not really common back then in their city, they start to wear that to the stadium and this phenomenon spread quickly to other cities across the country. Many people agree that Liverpool was the first who introduce casual culture. However, not few people that rejected this theory.

         Because of the rise of technology, casual culture spread widely to other countries and other continents, including Indonesia. This culture is very popular in Indonesia football supporter scene now, especially for the young people. They dress and behave the same like the English did in the seventies and eighties, again thanks to the internet and social media. There are no culture that come after the casual, so it this culture consider as the last culture in English football.

Name: Dikka Rafiansyah

NPM: 1806240744