Hooliganism

The

English

Disease

Daniel Sune Andreasen
Jakob Christiansen
- 2.E

A short prelude

We think this is a really good topic which is very up-to-date, and really interests us. We also think that it is a big pity that Jesper Fredin was not available for this assignment.
One of the biggest problems in writing this paper was the dominating lack of sources. It was basically impossible to search for information about the topic in books, and the only place to really search was on the Internet. Another problem was the difficulty of finding statistics that were up-to-date. Our problem formulation

We have decided to examine and analyse the often used terms; “Hooligan” and “Hooliganism”. Where do these terms come from? How come hooliganism is spread all over the world today? Could this be stopped? And especially, how come hooliganism is so much more dominant in England than in another country in the world?
These days you can hardly go a week without hearing of hooligans in England thrashing stuff, and/or other fans. The topic of hooliganism is extremely prevailing at the present time. It is a topic discussed all over the world, and everyone has an opinion about it.
We also chose this topic, seeing as we are both enthusiastic soccer fans and have seen incidents of hooliganism in real life.
Index of the project

Introduction to the term Hooliganism 1
How did the term arise? 1
Hooligans all over the world 2
Something needs to be done 3
The mother of hooliganism 4
Racism 5
Conclusion 6 Introduction to the term Hooliganism

To start this paper off, we would like to define the term “Hooliganism”.

Pronunciation: h'ooligun`izum
Definition: [n] willful wanton and malicious destruction of the property of others.

How did the term arise?

Actually, the history of hooliganism can be traced all the way back to the 13th century England. Of course this really can’t be used to mark the starting point of hooliganism we know today, but there were signs of the arising of hooliganism back then. This sort of hooliganism was of course very primitive and was seen in soccer matches that were meant to settle old feuds, personal arguments and land disputes. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word was first seen around 1898 in police reports around London. Since then it became popular and has been used ever since.
Soccer as we know it today was introduced to Europe around the 1900s. When soccer was first introduced, it was mainly the higher leagues of society that played the game.
As time went, a slow rising of hooliganism was to be seen. Hooliganism as we know and see it today first made its entrance to the stage of the world in the 1960s. The first incidents were in form of pitch invasions, riots and so on. Another thing that helped set off the hooligan bomb was the proletarians of England who were not allowed to play the game they wanted to.
Other European countries followed soon after with their own incidents of hooliganism in the 1970s, around 10 years later. It is said that there was an effect similar to the English proletarians in Europe, but this was never confirmed, maybe it was just something that just could not be avoided.
There are several legends going around about who was the first hooligan and such, but we think these stories are basically all pub stories heard a late Saturday night. E.g. that the word was first derived from a man named Patrick Hooligan, whom murdered a policeman and was sent to prison where he later died.²

Hooligans all over the world

Seeing as hooliganism started to settle disputes and feuds, there really shouldn’t be any reason for it to occur today. Democracy and other political systems should theoretically have stopped this. But hooliganism is more widespread today than ever before. Some even devote their life to it. Why do people risk their lives for next to nothing? I guess there is no way to ever know this, unless you become a hooligan yourself.
Although, you could try and go into the minds of these disturbed people and try to imagine why the do the things they do.
The primary reason for hooliganism to occur is the fact that attacking people or property gives the hooligan an adrenaline rush of some sort. It is common knowledge that adrenaline can make people do crazy things, and I do believe a lot of people find this rush when behaving like a hooligan. But couldn’t you just call yourself a hooligan when you go out and destroy property of others? The answer is no, being a hooligan also includes that you are in an organization of some sort.
This brings us to another reason hooliganism is seen a lot. It is hard to directly connect this to peer pressure, but I do believe it contains a degree of this. If you are at a soccer game and all your mates suddenly start attacking fans of the opposite team, it is hard to just stand by and do nothing.
The most important thing for this to happen though, is the person’s background. The above reasons are definitely important, and they are the main reasons for people doing what they do. But they will not be triggered unless the person considering being a hooligan has some sort of background that encourages the person to be a hooligan. The social background is by far the most important background. Hooligans are mainly people who have had a troublesome or violent childhood. Other main reasons include alcohol, drugs, attitudes, an argument with the wife before you left for the game, fatigue, a bad week at work, stress etc. People with issues tend to bring them to the game and use rage to output these issues. They can let everything go there, and if anyone gets upset with them, that is reason enough to let out even more rage. They want to be pushed and provoked, so they should be ignored.
The main core of hooligans is these people who go to games just to pick a fight. But some places in the world there are also fans that are just incredibly fanatic and will go berserk over a bad result by their team. This phenomenon is often seen in South American countries like Brazil and Argentina. As an example each year at a “Super Classico” game which is always between River Plate and Boca Juniors, approximately 10-20 dies due to these extremists.

Something needs to be done

It just isn’t right to just sit back and watch hooliganism rage and grow each year. Something must be done to try and stop this destructive behaviour. But what can be done? A lot of suggestions are currently being considered, but hopefully none will be as outrageous as the story of the Romanian fourth division team that was planning to build a moat around the soccer pitch and filling it with fully-grown hungry crocodiles to prevent fans from entering the pitch.
Actually, loads of things are being done about it. The most successful way of preventing hooliganism is also the most controversial way of going about it. This is the use of undercover operations. Infiltrating gangs and organizations has proven to be highly efficient. The main problem with this type of prevention is the fact that the reliability of evidence is not too good.
The main type of prevention used today is the option to register people who have acted violently on the stadiums and then banning them from games. This is the most widespread option used, and it is normal in a lot of countries, some countries are not using this system though, including Denmark.
Another widely used method of punishment is to fine the club with the hooligans. It is rather often seen that a club gets a massive fine due to having too violent fans.
A thing which really isn’t used today is the ability to help the hooligans with their personal problems instead of sending them to jail. I am thinking this might be one of the solutions for stopping these acts of infamy.

The mother of hooliganism

It is very hard to not agree that hooliganism is at its worst in England. The country has almost had problems with hooligans since medieval times. England has always been known to be the country which has had the biggest problems with hooliganism. I’d like to put some facts on this statement:

Division
One Division
Two Division
Three Division
Four All
Divisions
1986/87 2,008 1,700 926 878 5,502
1987/88 2,216 2,136 866 929 6,147
1988/89 2,389 1,747 1,225 824 6,185
1989/90 1,857 2,203 1,151 734 5,945
1990/91 1,747 1,710 411 251 4,119
1991/92 2,114 1,328 1,020 544 5,006 Premier
League Division
One Division
Two Division
Three Division
Four
1992/93 1,647 1,347 1,081 513 4,588
1993/94 1,630 1,359 782 456 4,227
1994/95 1,723 1,227 674 226 3,850
1995/96 1,697 949 506 289 3,441
1996/97 1,759 891 626 301 3,577
1997/98 1,438 1,173 468 228 3,307
1998/99 1,534 851 641 315 3,341 2000/1 1,623 816 601 351 3,391
Figure 1 - Arrests at English soccer matches.

As seen in the above statistics there are quite a lot of arrests each year due to hooliganism. A fortunate thing is that the numbers are declining as we progress through the years. But still 3.391 arrests each year just due to soccer matches is a lot. If the numbers do not seem above average to the normal reader, an example can be used to put it in perspective. If you take the numbers of the 1991/92 season, it averages 2,4 arrests per game that year. To compare this with another country, let us select Italy. Italy is well known for its “tifosi” and is also seen as one of the countries with a high rate of soccer related arrests. In the 1994/95 season, there were a total number of 2.922 arrests in Italy. Comparing that to the English statistic of the same year, 3.850, the English number is a whopping 31 % higher. So it is relatively easy for anyone to see that England is the mother of hooliganism, and maybe the solution to solving the world-wide spreading of this behaviour lies in stopping it in England.

Racism

Far-right groups and racism among hooligans is an extremely serious problem, and this is often the reason for outbreaks of violence, particularly at international matches, but also in England racist chanting at matches takes place. Even though it is not near the levels it reached in the 1970s and 80s when black players were often greeted with monkey-noises and bananas. The recent decline pf this, might be the widely used campaigns designed to oppress racism, such as the 'Let's Kick Racism Out of Football' campaign. Though the number of incidents related to racism has declined, they still happen too often. It is very unpleasant to read about Sunderland fans chanting towards Newcastle fans: “You are a team full of niggers” . Unfortunately it is not only Sunderland who has those problems with racist fans, almost every fairly supported club knows of this issue. Elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Germany and Austria, the problems with fans sympathising with the neo-Nazi movements may be more persisting than in England. We believe that in many cases nazi symbols and slogans may be used purely to shock and provoke, without any essential political conviction. All in all, it is way more threatening to be a nazi than a hippie. But even if they are political committed or just claim to be Nazis, it does not solve the racism problem. The solution is difficult and probably farfetched, because to exclude Nazis, or far right weak-minded, will almost certainly end in more fighting and banal debates about ‘living in a free country’. On the other hand, it would also be very wrong not to do anything at all, or just to make scrawny campaigns where you cautiously recommend fans not to act racist. The only thing to do right now, is to hit hard on racist cases and punish the responsible offenders, seeing that it will hardly help the offender being rehabilitated; this would more likely have the opposite effect.

Conclusion

It would be nice to have a definite conclusion on how to stop hooliganism. But during this project we have realized that just is not possible. Hooliganism goes a long way back in time and it is our personal opinions that it will never cease to exist. Hooliganism being an ancient tradition that goes all the way back to medieval times gives the impression that it just lies within our nature. Although we would still like to see the suggestions mentioned previously being enforced all over the world as they seem to have some effect in England. Going as far as the crazy Romanians is a bit extreme to our beliefs, but the general idea might not be that bad. Building something around the pitch is definitely not a bad idea. This would only solve the one problem of protecting players and the stadiums staff though. To fully begin a cleansing of the hooligans we think the authorities need to go way deeper. Taking the hooligans mental state into consideration and having institutes for them for rehabilitation is needed in our opinion. As to why England has the worst hooligans in the world, we think that this is mainly because the tradition of soccer began there. So maybe the main reason is that they are just ahead of the other nations in the progress of experiencing soccer. Another reason to its widespread position in England is the fact that soccer started as a game that was only available to the higher leagues of society, and this meant a lot of the poorer placed groups of people rebelled against this. We think this started the hooliganism growing in England and it has merely become a tradition the English will not let go.

Bibliography

List of urls:

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/hooliganism

http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-hoo1.htm

http://www.sirc.org/publik/fvexec.html

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_735648.html

http://www.footballnetwork.org/dev/communityfootball/violence_reduce_violence.asp

http://www.le.ac.uk/footballresearch/resources/factsheets/fs1.html

http://www.ex.ac.uk/politics/pol_data/undergrad/ashley/eu.htm