Football hooliganism, also known as football rioting, constitutes violence and other destructive behaviors perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism typically involves conflict between pseudo-tribes, formed to intimidate and attack supporters of other teams. Certain clubs have long-standing rivalries with other clubs and hooliganism associated with matches between them (sometimes called local derbies) can be more severe. Conflict may arise at any point, before, during or after matches and occasionally outside of game situations. Participants often select locations away from stadiums to avoid arrest by the police, but conflict can also erupt spontaneously inside the stadium or in the surrounding streets. In extreme cases, hooligans, police and bystanders have been killed, and riot police have intervened. Hooligan-led violence has been called "aggro" (short for "aggression" or "aggravation") and "bovver" (the Cockney pronunciation of "bother", i.e. trouble).
Hooligans who have the time and money may follow national teams to away matches and engage in hooligan behaviour against the hooligans of the home team. They may also become involved in disorder involving the general public. While national-level firms do not exist in the form of club-level firms, hooligans supporting the national team may use a collective name indicating their allegiance.
Behavior
Hooliganism can create a high level of violence at football matches. Outside of the physical violence, the behavior of these fans is extremely disorderly and leads to conflict breaking out. In some cases, hooliganism involves extreme ideological pathways such as Neo-Nazism or white supremacism. These extreme beliefs which they take on can further invigorate the violence. Hooligans' intentions are usually not focused on the match itself, despite club rivalries or pride often justifying the violence. They engage in behavior that risks them being arrested before the match, denied admittance to the stadium, ejected from the stadium during the match or banned from attending future matches. Hooligan groups often associate themselves with, and congregate in, a specific section (called an end in England) of their team's stadium, and sometimes they include the section's name in the name of their group.
Differences from ultras and alcohol-driven conflicts
In other parts of Europe and the world, these groups are known as ultras, in Hispanic America as Barra Bravas, and in Brazil as Torcidas Organizadas. However, these groups do not necessarily engage in violence in the same manner as hooliganism. These are supporters' groups with the primary objective of fanatically supporting the club through chants, flags, displays and organizing trips to away games. Due to their fanaticism, many of those groups frequently become embroiled with hooliganism, but do not have the explicit objective of causing violence.
Violence The type of violence committed by hooligans can come in a number of forms: starting fires, unarmed and armed fighting, hateful speech, and occasionally even acts committed against the players, such as throwing bottles to physically harm them or bananas to racially attack them.
In 2014 in a match between Barcelona and Villarreal, a fan racially abused Dani Alves, the Barcelona right back, by throwing a banana at him, insinuating that he was a monkey, a known racial stereotype against black people. The fan was banned for life.
Violence can also come as a result of a player's poor performance. Fans and in particular hooligans hold their mistakes to them, ridiculing them in any way possible. Andres Escobar was a Colombian defender whose own goal error led to the elimination of Colombia in the 1994 World Cup, resulting in him being subsequently murdered.
Match-day A study from LMU Munich analyzed violent crime in Germany from 2011 to 2015 and how much of that can be attributed to football. It found that on the day of the game, violent crime increased by 17% and during major rivalry games, violent crimes increased by 63%.
History The first recorded instances of football hooliganism in the modern game allegedly occurred during the 1880s in England, a period when gangs of supporters would intimidate neighbourhoods, in addition to attacking referees, opposing supporters and players. In 1885, after Preston North End beat Aston Villa 5–0 in a friendly match, both teams were pelted with stones, attacked with sticks, punched, kicked and spat at. One Preston player was beaten so severely that he lost consciousness and press reports at the time described the fans as "howling roughs". The following year, Preston fans fought Queen's Park fans in a railway station—the first alleged instance of football hooliganism outside of a match. In 1905, a number of Preston fans were tried for hooliganism, including a "drunk and disorderly" 70-year-old woman, following their match against Blackburn Rovers.
Although instances of football crowd violence and disorder have been a feature of association football throughout its history(e.g. Millwall's ground was reportedly closed in 1920, 1934 and 1950 after crowd disturbances), the phenomenon only started to gain the media's attention in the late 1950s due to the re-emergence of violence in Latin American football. In the 1955–56 English football season, Liverpool and Everton fans were involved in a number of incidents and, by the 1960s, an average of 25 hooligan incidents were being reported each year in England. The label "football hooliganism" first began to appear in the English media in the mid-1960s, leading to increased media interest in, and reporting of, acts of disorder. It has been argued that this, in turn, created a "moral panic" out of proportion with the scale of the actual problem.
Causes One of the main aspects to examine when trying to understand the root of hooligan violence is about the characteristics of sports teams. Chanting, flags, and ties to the team's area provide a base for "local patriotism", and thus, give way to the unnamed groups and organizations that hooligans identify with. This can expand to a national level, as seen in the case of the UEFA Euro 2016 riots caused by several countries' visiting fans as well as the French host fans. The violence at these tournaments can be amplified due to an increased degree of "patriotism".
Football hooliganism has factors in common with juvenile delinquency and what has been called "ritualized male violence". Sports Studies scholars Paul Gow and Joel Rookwood at Liverpool Hope University found in a 2008 study that "Involvement in football violence can be explained in relation to a number of factors, relating to interaction, identity, legitimacy and power. Football violence is also thought to reflect expressions of strong emotional ties to a football team, which may help to reinforce a supporter's sense of identity." In relation to the Heysel Stadium disaster one study from 1986 claimed that alcohol, irregular tickets sales, the disinterest of the organisers and the "'cowardly ineptitude'" of the police had led to the tragedy. Gow and Rookwood's 2008 study, which used interviews with British football hooligans found that while some identified structural social and physiological causes (e.g. aggression produces violent reactions) most interviewees claimed that media reports (especially in newspapers) and the police's handling of hooligan related events were the main causes of hooliganism.
Political reasons may also play in part in hooliganism, especially if there is a political undertone to such a match (e.g. unfriendly nations facing each other). Other deep division undertones in a match such as religion, ethnic, and class play a part as well in hooliganism.
As an attempt to explain the hooliganism phenomena in Brazil, Nepomuceno and other scholars at Federal University of Pernambuco have assessed 1,363 hooligan incidents before and after an alcohol sanction enforced during 8 years. While alcohol presented low evidence of contribution to the incidents of violence, the knockout phases, finals, competitiveness (derby matches), small score boundaries and the pride levels were some of the potentials for the violence among sports spectators. Months after the work being conducted, the State Legislature of Pernambuco decided to abolish the sanction to allow alcohol intake in stadiums. Writing for the BBC in 2013, David Bond stated that in the UK,
Effects Anti-hooligan measures The violence perpetrated by hooligans is somewhat of a dying phenomenon although experiencing some surges around 2015. The mid-1990s was when hooliganism was at its highest rate, however, police and clubs themselves have taken strides to prevent the level of hooliganism, and today, violence at games has decreased significantly not only in the amount that's taking place, but in the level of the conflict as well.
One example of anti-hooligan measures are some of the new rules that stadiums have put in place regarding alcohol. Some stadiums do not allow fans to bring their alcoholic drinks up to their seats; they are only permitted to the lower levels near the concessions. In addition, bottles are typically plastic, as to avoid the threat of fans hurling them at other fans or even players. In some cases, specifically in major tournaments, more extreme measures have to be put in place to help reduce the chances of violence. For example, at the 2016 Euros, officials recommended a complete ban on alcohol. In the event that violence results in riots that go out of control, police utilize tools like tear gas and water cannons in an attempt on crowd control. This can sometimes lead to increased violence from the hooligans.
Europe
Belgium Despite Belgian football hooliganism peaking from the 80s to the 90s, it did not disappear even after the establishment of stringent anti-hooligan measures by police and governments. Fights inside the stadium are growing rare, but have changed slowly and morphed into organized fights in the wilderness and nearby cities. Royal Antwerp, Beerschot, Club Brugge and Anderlecht are notorious for hooligan fanbases.
Bosnia and Herzegovina Many fans are associated with fascist ideologies, supporting and glorifying extremist movements such as the Ustaše and the Nazis.
In 2009, riots between supports of Bosnian Premier League club sides NK Široki Brijeg and FK Sarajevo left Horde Zla supporter Vedran Puljić (from Sarajevo) dead from a gunshot wound.
Hooliganism has also been present in lower leagues. Riots have been common in Jablanica because fans of different clubs tend to meet and clash there.
Bulgaria A 2019 Euro qualifying match between Bulgaria and England was suspended twice to remove fans that had been taunting black English players. Raheem Sterling said that he had heard masked groups making monkey sounds and performing Nazi salutes and throwing objects onto the pitch. After the match Bulgarian police officers were called in to escort the English fans to the safety of their hotels protecting them from the hooligans that had been removed earlier on during the match.
Croatia Football hooliganism in Croatia has seen riots over inter-ethnic resentments and the politics that were reignited by the breakup of the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s. Two of the best known hooligan firms are Torcida (Hajduk Split) and Bad Blue Boys (Dinamo Zagreb).
On 13 May 1990 (before the breakup of Yugoslavia), Serbian club Red Star Belgrade was in Zagreb to play Dinamo Zagreb at the Maksimir Stadium. Red Star was accompanied by 3000 Delije, the organised supporters of the club. Before the match a number of small fights broke out. Police reinforcements soon arrived with armoured vehicles and water cannons, focusing to separate the fans. Dinamo's player Zvonimir Boban kicked one policeman, defending a Dinamo's fan beaten by the police. The fighting lasted for over an hour and hundreds of people were injured.