Abstract
In the Netherlands, informal youth sports such as community football are mainly seen as a bridge towards (paid) membership of regular sport clubs and not valued as sport itself. This article challenges this idea of informal sport and analyses informal sport in a multicultural urban neighbourhood as a form of sport that has the potential for increasing social equality and inclusion. Based on ethnographic research with Muslim youth playing street football, the article identifies three forms of informal football in Dutch multicultural neighbourhoods, namely: unorganised non-time bound street football; municipality-organised football; and community-organised "grassroots" football. I will show how each of these forms has their own intersectional in- and exclusion mechanisms shaped by gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and class, and argue that these three forms of informal football in urban public spaces are in fact highly regulated. Informal football practices are analysed as spatial politics: the ways in which politics of identity and of in- and exclusion are managed spatially. Finally, the article traces the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on informal football and urban inequalities. It thereby contributes to the literature on informal sport by adding an explicit intersectional and spatial analysis, and explores the impact of COVID-19 on informal sport.
