Everyone knows that English football is popular in Asia, but how do supporters relate to clubs that are thousands of miles away? Dan Byrne from Spiel magazine went to China to find out

Before making this film I had only a vague idea of football in China. From the way clubs interact with China I had this notion of the country as a footballing “emerging market”: a venue for pre-season tours, a market for replica shirts and a domestic league that was attractive to ageing European stars who were looking for lucrative semi-retirements. I had heard a statistic about how there was 100 million Manchester United fans in China and found it compelling but knew nothing about what Premier League fandom in China would be like.

Football fans in China. Photograph: National Football Museum

The thought that 100 million Manchester United fans live thousands of miles away from Old Trafford is both an amazing testament to the appeal of the Premier League and a challenge to our view of fandom. All of the traditional ideas of inheriting a club being linked to geographical belonging are lost, but the key feature of being a fan, the emotional engagement, was clear.



Arsenal fans in China. Photograph: National Football Museum

When given the opportunity to work in China with some filmmakers from the National Football Museum, John O’Shea and Tim Brunsden, on the opening day of the new Premier League season, I was keen to try to find out more about the way Chinese fans experience football and what binds them to their teams.

We met people playing and watching football and we were struck by the extent to which they identified as fans of Premier League clubs. There was a real feeling of belonging involved with being a fan and all of the people we talked to invested lots of their energies and social time to fandom.



The Arsenal Supporters’ Club meet up for games, although Premier League match times mean that they usually meet in the early hours of the morning and have to hire a venue to make sure they have somewhere open and showing the game. The club is about watching the football and creating an atmosphere but it also seems to be about joining together as fanatics, as 铁粉, as Iron Fans.

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Iron Fans is part of the National Football Museum’s Out of Play programme

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