Lessons and Conclusions

The closing chapter contains the conclusions. I argue that the consumption of forbidden football in the eighties in Romania illustrates the power of football, and its role of social mobilisation. According to the findings the oppressive regime made a mistake when it decided to remove world competitions from the programme of the TVR and broadcast programmes of political propaganda instead, cultivating the cult of personality. Football gatherings did not only become widespread: they created resistant, voluntarily organised alternative social spaces, from where the state was driven out. After the rapid spreading of the consumption of forbidden football in Romania, the power was unable to control the phenomenon. The several decades of the functioning of the football gatherings disproves the atomised character of Romanian society and highlights the liberating and democratising effects of the information broadcast by foreign media.