The entangled scalarities of football clubs in a competitive metropolitan space: investment, identity and international events

ABSTRACT Football clubs located within competitive metropolitan spaces and owned by local municipalities develop their socio-spatiality through strong multiscalarities. Drawing from the sociology of football, human geography, geopolitical economy and urban studies, our study reveals that, within the competitive metropolitan city-region space, politico-institutional actors may capture small football clubs and competition and exploit them through various scenarios that reflect the politico-institutional scaffolding of local, regional or national scales, or the political, social and economic imaginaries or practices of the politico-institutional actors. Our case study deals with the small clubs from Ilfov county in Romania, which is part of the city-region developed around the global city of Bucharest. Over the last two decades, the Ilfov county has become the most represented county in the first two tiers of the Romanian football league system. Prior to that, clubs from Ilfov were absent from the first tiers. To examine the scalarity of football clubs from Ilfov, we analyse the socio-spatialities of (1) their success in terms of investment, (2) their club identity and (3) the scalar networks involved in hosting international tournaments.