Soccer Hooliganism

The passion around the world when it comes to the game of soccer is immeasurable. Known as football in all other nations except Canada and the United States, it is undoubtedly the most popular sport in the world. It is a game played by millions all across the world and in many countries, such as Brazil, soccer contributes to nationalism. Every four years it brings numerous nations together. This coming together, during what is known as the World Cup, is the most viewed sporting event across the globe. Soccer is a sport that has survived many

However, soccer sometimes has negative impacts on individuals taking part in the game as spectators or players. Soccer makes a number of individuals intolerant and this intolerance could cause disturbances to other participants in the game. Hooliganism is one of the most popular form of intolerance in the game of soccer where fans from the opposing sides in most instances get into physical confrontations resulting in injuries and in worse cases, deaths. An example was when Egypt faced Algeria in an African Nations Cup tournament where Algerian fans got down into the pitch and engaged the Egyptian fans in a physical fight which left several people dead. These physical fights are not only limited to the fans but the soccer players as well. Many instances have been reported of players getting into physical confrontations with the members of the opposing team (Huggins, 2007). This has resulted in the development of more stringent rules to reduce such incidences. This is evidence of how the popular culture that is soccer elicits emotions among the participant of the game.

The culture of soccer is more than just articles written in sport pages, or rumors about players been transferred from one club to another. It includes a bigger picture that covers many different social, political and economic aspects of the game. In countries where the sport is not that relevant, people refer to it as soccer. In others where the sport is very popular and has been around for a long time, it is referred to as football. When it comes to the sport, there are two very different ideas relevant to how people view it. In said countries where soccer is the national sport, the game is viewed as if it can achieve anything; from having just fun with your friends to helping unite people from around the world. In other countries where the sport is not as much popular, the game is seen as boring and is looked down on. This paper will explore how soccer is growing at such a rapid pace despite the fact that it can be viewed as violent and boring.

A little background behind the movie, Green Street Hooligans, is that's about a college journalist drop out who moves to England to live with his sister but ends up joining one of the firms there, Green Street Elite. Usually firms don't take outsiders that they don't know very well, let alone an American. In this movie, one sees how the fights start during the soccer game and continue even after the game is over and sees how ruthless

When the word ‘hooligan’ is said aloud the thought of kids running around playing using that word because it is catchy comes to mind, never has the idea of looking the word up or asking someone definition it come up. After learning what a ‘hooligan’ was, the definition of it doesn’t even begin to describe the recent behavior of Russia’s fans at the recent Confederations Cup. A ‘hooligan’ is defined as a violent young troublemaker within a violent group or gang. In 2016 at the European Championships Russian fans clashed with England fans ultimately seriously injuring 2 England fans and sending a number of other fans to the hospital as well. 31 people total were hospitalized with the majority of them being Brits. According to Boffey (2016) England fans were seen fleeing a section of the stadium after they were charged by a group of what appeared to be Russian fans. That was the first of what ended up being several attacks by large groups of Russians which took place throughout the whole tournament. This isn’t new behavior for the Russian fans either as Presse (2017) article states that Russian Football has long been plagued by hooliganism, which consists of pre-arranged fights

The following people helped with the making of this book with stories and pages, glad to call all of them good friends and great Hooligans: Josh Williamson, Hunter Froehlich, Thomas Ohmann, and Logan McGraw. Thank you all for some amazing years.

There is nothing more animated than going to a sporting event with your friends, decked out in the team’s colors and drinking a cold alcoholic beverage. Major sporting events draw out large crowds of people from diverse backgrounds who come together collectively to watch their team play, hoping for a win. Sporting events promote cohesion, people can come the game as strangers and at the end of the game leave as old friends. The problem of large sporting events is that riots can occur, win or lose, people come together through either excitement or anger to destroy property and each other. Understanding why people riot at games is significant for Sociology to help explain how the cohesion of people in this setting can promote violence.

The idea of racism in English Football, particularly the Premier League, is nowhere near as old as racism in England or the rest of the United Kingdom for that matter. However, the Premier League is often times considered the world’s best league when it comes to football and draws the best talent from around the world. In the recent years, the league has seen a sizeable influx of players from outside Britain and Ireland, which shows a reflection of an increasingly commercialized game with a global reach. These incredible players are put on center stage week in and week out throughout England on the biggest public arenas and draw millions of faithful supporters to their home club’s stadium. However, even with an increase in the number of foreign-born players, racism is still very prevalent in the ever-growing sport. The reality is that football represents one of the tapestries onto which social achievements and problems, claims and counterclaims are ritually etched. The growing awareness of how racism is connected to football functions through a complicated framework which reveals it as a problem which is very much “out there” in wider society today. Racism does touch the game of football, its players, officials, and their millions of supporters and reinforces the notion that racism is still very ubiquitous in an England that is often times considered diverse and accepting.

With the growth of technology, and an increase of non-white players from much different ethnical background, football is an easy target for racial slur. Futhermore, we see more racial actions inside the grounds of football clubs. Kassimeris, 2008 agrees by saying the conclusion seems inescap- able that football grounds provide one of the largest public arenas in which racism can be openly expressed. Just recently Dani Alves Barcelona FC defender was taking a corner kick when he had a banana thrown at him. He reacted to having a banana thrown by peeling it and then taking a bite. Former Barcelona striker Gary Lineker praised Alves. "Picked it up, peeled it, ate it and proceeded to take the corner," he tweeted. "Top response." The ex-England striker added: "Utterly brilliant reaction from Alves. Treat the racist berk with complete disdain!" (BBC Sport, 2014.) More drastic action has been noted when Kevin-Prince Boateng, fed

This article looks at the issues of crowd disorder, sometimes referred to as football hooliganism as stated by (Dunning et al.,1988 Scott and Pearson 2007). (Marsh et al.,1996) quotes that the phenomenon that is football hooliganism has been over researched over the years, but this article looks at different points of views of hooliganism it has results of many different ethnographic studies that took place between 1995 and 2010. The research was undertaken by different authors and involved five in depth longitudinal studies with fans from Liverpool, Everton, Manchester united, Cardiff city and Blackpool and also the England national team. The first author’s research included 59 interviews, 23 focus groups and 39 crowd observations

Riot among supporter: riot among supporters is one of risk must be faced by the host. Riot usually happen when there are 2 teams with high intensity, as example football match between Indonesia Vs Malaysia. This game always plays with high intensity where the supporter may start to disturb each other. The probability of this may be moderate but have high impact to the match. The match may be stooped because the riot even the team may be disqualified from the tournament. It is difficult to detect when the riot will come?, because it’s depend on the supporter

There are many roots, causes, and motives to the spread of hooliganism in those countries. In his article about the plague of hooliganism in Turkish football, Altay (2015) declares: “Turkey is home to some of the world’s most fanatical football supporters” (para.1). fanaticism can be considered as one of the possible reasons for hooliganism in Turkey. On the other hand, an article published in Reuters by Davis (2014) indicated that “Italy is famous for its 'ultras', groups of hardcore fans who are frequently behind the stadium violence which has dogged all levels of the country's football since the 1970s” (para.22). Such directories along with numerous other evidences and incidents raise the negative reputation of the Turkish and Italian football fans as a result of football hooliganism, which in fact has several threats, causes, effects, and violence aspects to be considered in relation to the modern football. That’s why hooliganism is a very controversial topic and one of its debates centers on whether hooliganism constitute the main problem in modern football or there are other major concerns that dominate over it as the financial corruptions and the extensive money

Historical hooligans were called “roughs”. They caused trouble at matches throughout the 19th century. Some extreme cases the roughs attacked referees and visiting players. In the 60’s football as a sport began to get more media attention, so did the fights and disorder. In the 60’s hooligans were more organized than it is today. We do not see outrageous incident frequently nowadays.

The destructive and unruly behavior of extraordinarily zealous football fans is referred to as football hooliganism. The participants of football hooliganism who support their respective football clubs demonstrate all kinds of violent behaviors including scuffling, sabotage and intimidation (Another sorry outbreak of the England disease, 2004). This behavior is most often based on the rivalry that exists between different football clubs or teams and can give rise to great conflicts once the matches have ended and sometimes even before that. Sometimes when these conflicts arise during the match at the stadium, the people who practice hooliganism are arrested by the police, meanwhile most of the times the supporters of the rival teams choose to confront each other at places that are far away from the stadiums so as to get away from the police arrests.

Both UEFA Champions League fans and those in the United States do not behave in any manner that may suggest hooliganism. The match played on 3rd of June 2017 was calm with no case of a misdemeanor from the fans. Consequently, fans in America also maintain their cool even when they lose to their opponents. I observed that the Juventus supporters were sorrowful. Despite this fact, the fans did