Gabrielle Parks, M.S.
Thomas Orr, PhD.
Football Hooliganism
Violence is not a rare occurrence in the sporting realm. In fact, it is mostly unheard of that an instance of verbal abuse does not occur in a single game, independent of level, sport, or age. Violence is not categorised solely by inflicting physical injuries, but is said to be any type of behaviour which causes harm, occurs outside the rules of sport, and is unrelated to the competitive nature of the sport (US Legal Definitions). As well as violent occurrences involved on the playing field or court between players, violence of any kind is often seen between coaches and players, parents and coaches, officials, and fans and spectators. Because of this high incidence rate of violence between opposing spectators, this paper will examine the existence of this type of violence in the form of football hooliganism, and some theories as to why this phenomenon occurs in society.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a fan is described as “an enthusiastic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator,” but football fans, particularly in Europe, usually take the term ‘devoted’ and transform the meaning into something drastically different. From this, there is an entirely different sub-category definition of ‘fan’ that lends itself to a particular group in society; football hooligans. Although much of the research concerned with football hooliganism centres around English football clubs, there are many other fans in Europe, and the rest of the world, that exhibit the same types of behaviour. Football hooliganism, whilst a declining event, is still very much a serious issue in today’s society.
Historically, a hooligan is a person who engaged in a type of behaviour that was considered rowdy, or even possibly criminal (Spaaij and Anderson 6). Hooliganism was not pre-meditated and violent fights during matches between rival teams were mostly due to the large crowds in small spaces, and the presence of alcohol at games. However, in 19th century England, a change occurred that was categorised as ‘The English Disease.’ In the simplest terms, Braun and Vliegenthart defined football hooliganism as “…organised groups that try to initiate fights with rival groups…” This change, around the 1960-80’s, coined football hooliganism, was a change that presented acts of violence that were planned and related to person engaging in fighting that did not transmit to the specific match itself. This change also saw the formation of rival gangs called firms. Firms were groups of people that came together through their love of a specific team, with the intent to intimidate and physically attack opposing supporters (Brewin).
Although hooliganism is said to be declining in England, it is still very much alive all across the globe. In the present day, the parametres concerning the act of football hooliganism is far spread, and not always involved with the timing of the game itself. According to Dunning, Murphy, and Williams, there are many situations where hooliganism is evident. For example, there may be hand-to-hand fighting between two people, a group out on the streets, numerous amounts of fans rioting in a stadium, fights between teams travelling to the games, or groups following rival teams after the match has concluded. In an effort to evade police, rival firms may also plan to surprise their counterparts on different days of the week leading up to a specific game. As well as this, there has also been instances where weapons have been used. Although there is clear intent to participate in physical violence, many ‘football hooligans’ state that the intent to harm another is not evident. Leeson, Smith, and Snow state that many fans fight other fans because they believe that this type of behaviour is a part of the game of football, as it always has been.
Even though football hooliganism received widespread media attention only after the 1960’s, there are many examples in history that exhibit violence before this time. Caribella, Marsh, Marsh and McCann listed many incidents that occurred prior to media coverage that showcased the unorganised nature of football rivalry. In 1906, a match between Tottenham and Aston Villa had to be abandoned because spectators invaded the pitch. In 1920, Birmingham fans constructed missiles using bottles from inside the stadium, and deployed them into the rival fan seating areas during the game. As well as these incidents occurring around England, many other parts of Europe were experiencing unorganised football hooliganism. In 1931 in France, policemen were needed to suppress disturbances in a crowd during a Nice and Wolves match, and in 1933 in Germany, Hertha fans invaded the pitch which led to an injury sustained to an opposing team player.
Although incidents increased during after this time, the majority of incidents still occurred inside the stadiums in the 1960-80’s. One particular disaster on May 29, 1985, lays in the minds of every football fan all around Europe: the Heysel Stadium disaster. Liverpool were the defending European Cup champions, and Juventus were champions in numerous other competitions around the globe. For fans on either team, and football fans in general, this match provided an enormous rivalry game for the ages. Although the Heysel Stadium was considered Belgium’s national stadium, it was in dire need of repair before the game, and many parts of the walls surrounding the stadium were crumbling by the time the match was to be played.
The stadium was divided into sections, fans of Juventus allocated one end of the stadium, and Liverpool fans allocated the other. There was a smaller section immediately next to the Liverpool section that was allocated for ‘neutral’ Belgium fans, but could be purchased from any ticketing agency (Vulliamy). Many of the tickets in this section went to Juventus fans, who stood yards away from the rival Liverpool fans, with only a temporary chain-link fence separating the sections. About an hour from kick-off, Liverpool fans started to throw stones from the crumbing walls towards the Juventus fans in the ‘neutral’ area. The intensity of supporters increase and Liverpool fans started to move towards the separated area. The Juventus fans, trying to flee, attempted to jump the wall but already crumbling, the wall could not withstand the extra weight and collapsed. The majority of the thirty nine deaths and over six hundred reported injuries were attributed to this (Vulliamy).
The fighting, however, did not stop there. Juventus fans across the stadium could see the wall crumbling and their ‘comrades’ fleeing the Liverpool rioters. The fans rushed to help, only for police to intervene. The brawling and riots between the police and the Juventus fans lasted for hours, but eventually subsided due to the force of the police (Vulliamy). After the incident, many Liverpool fans were arrested and charged for manslaughter, which led to a five year ban for all English football club teams to participate in European competitions. From this disaster, there has been many changes to the seating areas of stadium, and the amount of police present at every game.
After this disaster, the Football Spectators Act, passed in 1989, banned convicted hooligans from attending international matches, and the Football (Disorder) Act in 1999, sought to make no distinction between domestic and international bans. From the increase in police presence, and the imposing bans, many football hooligans had to find new ways to dominate rival firms, and thus resorted to violence that occurred outside of game day. These newly-formed attacks were an organised and pre-meditated form of violence (Spaaij and Anderson 2). The increase in diversity of violent incidents involving football sparked a media frenzy and the world began to take notice of football hooliganism as a serious social problem.
Even though these acts were in place, rioting did not stop altogether and happened on very large scales occasionally. In 1995, a friendly between England and Ireland sparked a violent frenzy where English fans threw things into the stands below them, and started to destroy the stadium seats and benches. In 2009, West Ham United and Millwall fans set out to invade the pitch and riot in the streets following the game. There were many injuries from the riots, but the most severe was a man with multiple stab wounds (Caribella et al). Although there is research concerning the causes of football hooliganism, these disasters proved that this type of fan violence was not only problematic in society, but also very dangerous.
Scholars from all across the globe concluded the more they understood the reasons football hooliganism existed, the more they could do to counteract the issue. Many researchers disagree about the exact causes of hooliganism, but all come to an understanding that this type of behaviour is a social phenomenon, engrained with psychological factors. Some of the earliest publications on the causes of football hooliganism were courtesy of Ian Taylor and John Clarke (Spaaij “Aspects of Hooligan Violence”). Taylor and Clark both argued that football was a sport that young working-class males identified with. In essence, football hooliganism “…should be interpreted as a kind of working-class resistance movement,” (Taylor 354) that involved a way for these men to resolve conflict in their own lives (Clark). These publications looked at hooliganism as a way for working-class males to blow off steam about the frustrations in other parts of their lives. Both of these researchers were quickly criticised, however, because they lacked any empirical evidence (Spaaij “Understanding Football Hooliganism”).
From these publications, researchers came to recognise football hooliganism as a ‘figurational sociological phenomenon.’ Figurational sociology is defined as “a structure of mutually-orientated and dependent people,” (Aya 223) that have developed a set of values regarded as ‘civilised’ behaviour. These values however, did not integrate into the lower class (Spaaij “Transitional Phenomenon” 212). These forms of civilisation, namely lack of violence in this case, was not valued in the working class society. Dunning, Murphy and Williams state that the working class also did not have as many forms of excitement as the other classes in society, so the men resorted to fighting as a means for entertainment, disregarding the social normality and expectations of the higher-level social classes around them.
These lower-class males developed aggressive behaviours because of their willingness to fight and their adoration of masculine leaders. Both of these factors were the criteria for becoming part of a group. From expressing their behaviours in a lower-class, males were often rewarded and received ‘pleasurable’ feelings, rather than anxiety about violent occurrences. The more that these men were rewarded for violent behaviours, and the more they joined the ranks of a sought-after ‘firm,’ the more the responded to situations with violence.
Although many scholars still discuss figurational sociology in sport today, many of these theories have been disproved because these types of behaviour and civilisation values are not exhibited in other football hooliganism incidents around the world. Ek noted that in West Germany, there was an increase in football hooliganism from the upper and middle class. As well as this, other countries football hooliganism patterns suggest that differences are due to religious beliefs, geographic location, generational variance, and race, rather than a difference in social class (Dunning and Elias).
After this theory was shown to not represent football hooliganism as a world-wide phenomenon, researchers sought to find other causes for this violent behaviour. In 2008, a theory outlined by Braun and Vliegenthart suggested that there are four factors that relate to violent incidents in football matches. These include repression, or “…the number of arrests to the number of violent attacks reported at matches,” media coverage, grievances, or changes in unemployment, and the intensity of aggressiveness during a game. The latter involves the number of cautions and expulsion cards a referee may hand out to the players.
Although this study proved to provide some of the causes for football hooliganism, it was widely considered incomplete. Drawing from all the theories mentioned, Spaaij and Anderson adopted the position that football hooliganism is a form of collective violence that shapes social actions based on social identification (3). As defined by the World Health Organization, collective violence is “the instrumental use of violence by people who identify themselves as members of a group…against another group or set of individuals, in order to achieve political, economic, or social objectives.” From collective violence, Spaaij and Anderson displayed a conceptual model of soccer fan violence that involved macro-level influences such as match specifics, interventions, place, and communication, and mediating influences such as second nature and fan identity (6). These three influences, as shown in the diagram below, lead to the type of behaviour seen as football violence, or hooliganism.
The first of these influences relate at a macro-level and have been explained by Braun and Vliegenthart, concerning economic, political, social, and cultural features. Factors such as lower working-class individuals, a large crowd, alcohol, rivalries between teams, and the intensity of the match and between the players combine to form a perfect scenario where crowds can start to become violent, and engage in behaviours concurrent with the definition of football hooliganism.
From the combinations, comes a number of other influences that are far more psychological. “Mediating influences explain how cause translates into effect, while moderating influences are those factors which affect the intensity of direction of effects” (Spaaij and Anderson 17). Individuals identify with a collective, in this case a firm, and then learn behaviours that are directed at “…the object of their contention,” such as a rival firm. Each individual has inherent differences and diverse personal experiences, but their second nature is the ability to act the same in similar situations as others in the group. From this, the members of the group can identify with each other, and share common interests, as is the case for fan violence. The identity that comes with being a member of a firm is the result of economic, political, social, and cultural differences that intertwine together to make one collective group with a common goal: dominance over a rival firm (16).
Although these mediating influences explain how cause turns into effect, moderating influences explain why some incidents of football hooliganism are more intense than others. According to Bairner, the hooligan experience is based on excitement and arousal, and involve individuals who want to engage in thrilling behaviours (585). Although many fights occur at rivalry games, and between firms that have well-known rivalries, these fights do not always occur because of their distaste for the other firm, rather from the excitement, or the hype of fighting against a well sought-after rival. Most of society views hooliganism as mindless fighting, but it is rather a very rational and organised form of social control within a sub-culture (Spaaij and Anderson 6). The media also plays an influence in moderating forms of fan violence in football, as the more masculine the headlines seem to the public, the more firms want to start fighting to show their own dominance.
Taylor, Clark, and Braun and Vliegenthart recognised and labelled key macro-level influences in regards to football violence. These influences described first and foremost from crowd size and increasing rivalries between teams, initiate hooligan behaviour in football for working-class males and their need to release the frustrations of their everyday life. Combined with the need to identify with a group, and the notion of dominance and masculinity, these influences highlight the behaviours exhibited by fans that leaders to football hooliganism, or pre-meditated violent attacks on opposing teams.
Violence is not rare in today’s society, nor is it rare to continuously see all types of violence occur at sporting events and games throughout the world. Violence at these types of events are social phenomenons, with football hooliganism paving the way. Hooligans exhibit behaviours that cannot be broken down and labelled by one specific cause, but always display the need for social identity, masculinity, excitement, and dominance over others. Although declining in many parts of the world, football hooliganism is still a very serious issue in sport’s violence, and the work and research of the scholars mentioned in this paper may be a factor to consider when looking at aggressive behaviour in other contact sports.
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