Chosen Beasts

Written By: Muskaan Kaushik

Edited By: Jiyaa P Shah 

Graphic Designer:

The game has already begun long before the referee blows the whistle. Thousands of scarves rise into the air, chants echo through the stands, and everywhere you look, the same creatures stare back. A fox. A canary. An eagle. A devil. They seem like simple mascots, but they raise a question as old as civilization itself: why do humans choose symbols, and why animals in particular?

The answer lies much deeper than sport. 

Long before there were sports fields and arenas, there were banners, standards, shields, and coats of arms. Roman legions marched beneath the eagle, a symbol of power and authority. Medieval Europe was full of lions, wolves, boars, stags, and many other creatures in the heraldry of noble families and kings. They were not picked because people thought those animals had their virtues. They were picked because symbols could transmit the identity, aspiration, and belonging of a person in one look.

Football speaks that language remarkably well. 

The symbols of many football teams have something in common with the history of their location, folklore, regional identity, or even intentional rebranding. Notwithstanding the differences in the history of origin, each of them plays the same role. Signs give a sense of belonging to something bigger than just a team.

The nickname of Leicester City is the Foxes, and it relates to the long history of Leicestershire associated with fox hunting. The canary became associated with Norwich through the city’s canary-breeding history. Crystal Palace got its sign not as a result of folklore, but as part of the rebranding at the beginning of the 1970s.

The power of these symbols doesn’t reside in asking where the symbol came from. It is about what people decided to give it meaning.

The football crest is always much more than a symbol of the team. It becomes a symbol of the memory. Children spend years drawing the crest in the corner of their books. The parents hand down the scarves to their offspring. Fans of the team tattoo the crest on their bodies. In time, an image which started as a representation of the local fauna, a historical tradition, or simply as a marketing choice, takes a different meaning. The animal no longer represents the team. It represents something larger; it represents home. 

Not every football club selects animals as their mascot. There are hammer, blade, saint, or devil mascots. But the need is still the same. The communities find the symbols which can answer one simple but profound question. Who are we?

It may be the reason why football engenders an allegiance that is at times inexplicable. Players come and go. Coaches change. Stadia are demolished and built again. But the crest lives on since it possesses something which goes deeper than victories. It possesses a sense of identity.

Football may not have inherited each of its symbols from history directly. But it has inherited a tradition which predates the game itself by many centuries. From century to century, humans gathered under animals, colours and symbols to proclaim their identity and heritage. Symbols are used both by a knight to paint his shield and by a city to carve its coat of arms and by a fan to wear a football shirt. They allow communities to narrate their own histories.

It may be the essence of football.

Not a game played on a field, but a collection of memories and identities that people choose to share.

Sometimes, all it takes is a chosen beast.