Soccer fans are well known for their intense rivalries, but there’s at least one thing that unites fans all around the world. Regardless of the club, the country, or even the climate involved, fans everywhere love a good scarf. So why is it that soccer fans from the rainforests of Rio to the rainclouds of Redditch like to sport a scarf?

A simple answer here is that the scarf merely acts as a piece of branding. Just like wearing a football jersey or waving a team flag, a scarf is simply a handy, portable, lightweight way of displaying your team’s name, colors, or logo, and thereby demonstrating your support for them. Logistically, too, the lengthened and narrow shape of a scarf makes it less cumbersome than a flag, and means that it can be easily lifted aloft, above a fan’s head, with one hand at either end.

So in these terms, a scarf is just a token of support—and an easily visible and portable one at that. But perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a little more to this question than just that.

Winter Gear Before Fan Gear

Flags have been a staple of soccer games for almost 100 years, with the earliest traceable record of someone wearing a recognizable soccer scarf dating back to a British Pathé newsreel report of a local English FA Cup game in 1934. Before then, team-branded ribbons, hats, rosettes, and even wooden rattles were all popular accessories at soccer games in the UK, the origins of which trace back to the game’s modern history in the late 19th century.

Although they were often branded in team colors, the earliest soccer scarves of the 1930s were often not official merchandise, however, and nor were they worn or held aloft purely for visual appeal. Instead, they originally had a far more practical history, rooted in the near year-round soccer season in the UK.

The English Football Association first held its annual league competition—the world’s oldest national-level soccer contest—in 1871. Just twelve teams took part that year, with the inaugural season’s very first games played in November of 1871, and the final was played the following March. That meant that the games were played in the depths of a British winter, which understandably made standing on the terraces cheering the teams on something of an unpleasant experience for many of the fans. As a result, many fans wore winter clothing, including woolen scarves.

How Soccer Scarves Went Global

As the league grew bigger and more teams joined the competition, the English soccer season became longer in order to accommodate them all, but throughout, it remained fixed in the calendar on either side of winter. Even today, in fact, the English league season typically runs from August to May (leaving the summer clear for international matches, competitions, and training).

By the 1930s, the FA Cup competition was now the principal sporting event in the UK, and an increasingly popular hobby among British fans, which made items like handmade scarves in a fan’s team colors especially thoughtful gifts. The very first soccer scarves, ultimately, were not only worn to fend off the worst of the British winter weather, but were typically handmade and knitted—and even became affectionately known as “granny scarves” among early fans.

As soccer increased in popularity worldwide throughout the 20th century (spurred on by Britain’s continued imperial presence at the time), the wearing of branded scarves went with the game, regardless of the countries where the sport was played. Clubs later got in on the game too, producing their own branded scarves that could be sold at stadiums and gift shops. As a result—although it’s perhaps not as necessary to wear a scarf at a game in the summertime heat of Mexico City or Rio de Janeiro as it is in England in December—soccer scarves have nevertheless become a staple of games, all around the world.

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