This article sanctifies the role of fans during major sporting events as a resource of "soft" image influence on sports and political regional identity. The consequences of fans' activity are announced in media texts with a wide range of ratings: from "national" character, political provocation, to fanatic extremism. The precedents with participation of the extremist-minded youth among the fans are a threat to the potential of sports culture and leveling the entire national symbolic heritage of the sporting event. Today it can be argued that out of all the variety of resources and tools of sports discourse, the fan's institution is a missed "soft power". The fan is an integral part of the sociocultural heritage of the event. This is especially important on the eve of major sporting events, including the World Cup. It is especially important to rehabilitate the reputation of the domestic fan in the situation of escalating political tension, when the West is actively conducting geopolitical struggle with Russia in every sphere. Obviously, the football discourse should cover the theme of the policy of national memory in relation to the fan movement. The political and intellectual elite use a mega-sporting event in the practice of branding the territory by appealing to symbolic resources, the discourse of identity, the politics of memory, and seduction by attractive images.