Alfred Archer
Tilburg University
Most football fans want their team to win and be successful. But there is a strange kind of fan, a foul-weather fan, who wants their own team to lose. I will try to make sense of this kind of fandom and try to argue that it is not such a strange kind of fandom after all.
Sports fandom plays a major role in many people’s lives. Some diehard fans of football teams travel hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles to watch their teams play, spending significant sums of money in the process. These fans celebrate their team’s wins as if they were our own, while humiliating defeats may ruin an otherwise pleasant weekend for the fan.
This is not the only way to be a football fan. Some fans love the game itself and take delight in watching the best teams in the world play each other, without feeling any special attachment to one or the other. Other ‘fair-weather’ fans root for a team but in a half-hearted way. They might turn up when things are going well but will not be there when times are bad.
If you or someone you know is a football fan, you probably know different fans who fit into each of these different categories. There is, though, a less common kind of fan who you may never have met. These are foul-weather fans. These fans support their team when they are losing but lose interest when their team starts to win. Like fair-weather fandom, this is a conditional form of fandom, one that will only be activated when the team is performing a certain way. Unlike fair-weather fans, though, foul-weather fans will only show up when their team is doing badly.
Consider the fans of the Brazilian football team Ibis Sport Club. Between 1980 and 1984, the club went on a remarkable run, losing fifty-five matches in a row in a period stretching almost four years.
An interesting idea I hear you say but surely there aren’t any actual fans like this! Being a fan means supporting your team, what kind of fan wants their team to lose? But while they may be rare, such fans do exist.
Consider the fans of the Brazilian football team Ibis Sport Club. Between 1980 and 1984, the club went on a remarkable run, losing fifty-five matches in a row in a period stretching almost four years. In this time, the team became known as ‘The Worst Team in the World’. The club and their fans embraced this label, stitching it into their strips and naming their mascot Derrotinha (little defeat).
However, in 2017, something strange happened to Ibis: they began to win matches. In September that year the team won three matches in a row, equalling its best ever run of victories. You might expect the long-suffering fans to be delighted. The opposite was true. After the third victory, the fans interrupted the team’s post-match barbeque to demand that the team stop winning. The fans worried that the team were losing their identity. They were supposed to be the worst team in the world and here they were winning regularly. As one protestor explained, “This is destroying our history”. The club’s iconic former player Mauro Shampoo agreed, saying, “If we keep winning, we are going to lose our brand.”
Foul-weather fans present a puzzling form of fandom. The term football supporter contains within the idea that fans support the team. This support can quite naturally be understood as wanting the team to do well and encouraging them to do so. In football winning is the central (though perhaps not the only) way in which a team can do well. Fan support can make an impact here. Football players often mention the support they get from the ‘Twelfth man’ in the stands as being crucial for helping them secure victory—providing the extra bit of energy to chase after a tricky winger or courage to put their body on the line to make a crucial tackle. The point of supporters is to do exactly this, to cheer their team to victory. Foul-weather fans, then, seem to go against the very meaning of fandom—so much so that we might question whether they can really be called fans at all.
But we should not dismiss foul-weather fans so quickly. Ibis fans genuinely care about their club. These fans care about their club just as other fans care about theirs. Being a fan of their team is a key part of their identity. Similarly, the fan community is an important source of feelings of belonging, helping to give meaning and purpose to their lives. It would be wrong then to say that foul-weather fans cannot be fans at all.
A better way to put the worry is not that these fans are not real fans but rather that this is a perverse form of fandom. Yes, they may care about the team but surely caring about the team means wanting them to win! Imagine a friend who is disappointed whenever their friend gets offered a job they want, receives a promotion or wins the lottery. Perhaps we could still say that they are a friend but they do not seem to be a very good friend. The same thought might apply here. No matter how much a fan cares about a team and builds their identity around it, if they do not want their team to succeed then they are not a good fan.
Put like this, the argument seems persuasive. But the argument overlooks something important: that winning or losing are not the only ways in which a football team can succeed or fail. Some teams may build an identity around a particular style of attractive and entertaining football. Giving up on this style of play may be reasonably viewed as a failure by some fans even if it leads the team to win competitions. Other teams may be built around a particular religious identity (such as Glasgow Celtic’s Catholicism) or a clear political outlook (such as St. Pauli’s clear left-wing identity). Giving up this identity might also reasonably be viewed by fans as a failure, even if it were accompanied by sporting success. So, while it may be a clear sign of bad fandom to root against your club’s success, winning is not the only possible form of success. If winning means losing the identity that makes your club special, then it is perfectly understandable that a good fan might prefer that their team does not win.
This, perhaps, allows us to understand the Ibis fans reactions a little better. During the team’s long run of defeats and failure, the worst team of the world started to become a badge of honour for their fans. The identity of the club became closely attached to failure. To support the worst team in the world became something to take pride in. Other fans may support bad teams but Ibis fans support the worst team. This became the central feature of the community of fans and what distinguished them from other fans. To win, then, would be to lose their identity and for the community to lose the very thing that makes it unique.
There may even be something to say for this kind of fan identity. The philosopher of sport Anthony Skillen has argued that one key sporting virtue is that of being able to lose well. In Skillen’s words, losing well involves “generous humility” and “has a noble beauty, a special gracefulness, that exemplifies the finest in human nature”. Fans of losing teams have a great deal of opportunity to witness these virtues of actions. Perhaps part of the appeal for these fans is the opportunity to see these players embody this humility week after week and still have the resilience and determination to try again next week. By standing by such players, these fans can also display their own virtue, namely the loyalty they have for their team.
The foul-weather fan then is not such a strange form of fan. Like other fans, they may care deeply about their team and want their team to succeed in some sense. The form of success they are interested in, though, is not victory but the preservation of identity and staying true to the very thing that makes them unique.
Nevertheless, there is an important problem here. Football players tend to have a desire to win their matches. While some may be quite happy to play for an underdog, part of the appeal in doing so is the possibility of being part of a magnificent underdog victory story. A club that builds its identity around losing, then, is likely to find that the interests of the players conflict with that of the fans. Ultimately, then, foul-weather fandom is likely to be unsustainable in the long-term. The challenge for those involved with clubs with foul-weather fans is to find a way to carry on a sense of the club’s special identity, even when the defeats have dried up.
Copyright © Alfred Archer 2026
This article was previously published in Polish translation in Filozofuj! Vol. 70 No. 4. with the title ‘Dziwny przypadek kibica na złe czasy’. Thank you to Filozofuj! for permission to publish the English version here.
