Football hooliganism is sometimes glamorized and seen as a symbol of oppositions to many things that many people find oppressive. Police, “the man,” and large profit organizations, and disrespectful rival firms may be some of the opposition that they face. The fact of the matter is, football hooliganism is dangerous in many different ways. This blog will address the dangers that football hooliganism can bring not only to the football matches, but also to areas around and far away from the matches as well.

While football hooliganism primarily consists of competitive violence between rival football firms, their violent behavior is not restricted to inter-group fighting, but may include missile throwing, vandalism, attacks on the police and regular fans, or racial abuse. I spoke in another blog about racism so I will not go to in depth about this subject, but I will speak about it again. Racism offends not only the person or group you are aiming the insults to, but also bystanders that hear and are present when the slander is being spoken. Vandalism and the missile throwing will also put innocent people in harm. Hooliganism is not only senseless, but very childish and dangerous as well.

Second, the violent behavior of hooligan groups takes places not only at or in the immediate vicinity of football grounds, but also in other contexts, for example city centers, pubs, clubs or railway stations. The movement of the violence once again puts many innocent bystanders in danger, but also destroys property as well. These acts of violence affect the entire city due to the actions of a few hooligans that best express themselves by fighting. With these fights happening in public places, police need to be called and this further wastes the cities money due to the allocation of police to this incident. Police could much rather be working cases and helping solve crimes, but the violence of the hooligans take them away from their other more important duties.

Third, football hooliganism involves a great deal of symbolic opposition and ritualized aggression, which is easily confused with ‘real’ violence. This aspect of football hooliganism is not dangerous for the public, but dangerous for the football hooligans themselves. The hooligans that create their own groups for the sole purpose to praise their team and bash other teams are walking a very dangerous road. Innocent supporters that don’t know the true society and brotherhood of the hooligans are often looked at rivals and highly sought after to be fought. This misunderstanding can lead to great bodily harm to these mere fan club members who don’t really deserve the beating.

Hooligans live by a code and sometimes they die by a code. Violence is just part of the game that they play to gain respect for themselves and their football club. Innocent bystanders are often a common place in the riots that they create.

References:

http://www.cafyd.com/HistDeporte/htm/pdf/4-16.pdf

"Preventing Football Hooliganism." Footballnetwork.org - "our goal is education". N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. .

To many people, the act of football hooliganism is seen as unruly and often law breaking behavior that needs to be handled in some way or another. In the past decades, football clubs and organizations have been putting efforts in on the prevention of football hooliganism. These preventative practices these organizations implement, reveal that successful prevention depends on the efforts of a variety of institutions and agents. They also highlight the importance of continuous, locally grounded commitment to the prevention of football hooliganism.

Police are often criticized for their brutal type of enforcement whenever a hooliganism problem seems to arise in a soccer match. Riots often caused by two rival football firms are usually ended by the violence from another group, the police. Police take a reactive form of policing that combat the hooliganism only once it arises as a problem, but in the 1980’s a shift in policing tactics occurred. Instead of taking a reactive enforcement pattern, the police had developed a more proactive form of policing. By using intelligence gathered through the means of co-departmental cooperation between different countries, football hooliganism patterns can be studied and predicted. This proactive type of policing is still in a trial and error phase, but more and more riots are being prevented.

Other efforts made to prevent the hooliganism violence before and after a football match is the cooperation between local governments and football clubs, otherwise known as fan projects. Different countries have slight variations on how they dictate their fan projects, but the gist of a fan project is the improving of relations between the football hooligans and the football organization that they are supporting and the police. For example, German football attempts to prevent football hooliganism by improving the relations between fans, clubs and police. While in the Netherlands, fan projects aim to improve the relations between clubs and militant fan groups, and the social skills and career opportunities of convicted hooligans. Whether in Germany or in the Netherlands, organizations and governments are making more proactive efforts in lessening the violence caused by hooligans in different countries.

The heart of the problem of football hooliganism lies at the football club’s historical lack of interest in preventing or reducing football hooliganism. Football clubs often would give away free tickets and arrange travel for hooligans in order to further support the club. A good example of this behavior can be seen from the actions of FC Barcelona, a Spanish football club. FC Barcelona was known for their hooliganistic violence, and the organizations lack of reaction to the violence, but in 2003 things changed for the football club. Due to the election of a stringent new manager, Joan Laporta, he implemented a new zero tolerance policy to hooliganism violence. FC Barcelona now makes it a point to react to fans violence by working on club/fan relations and informing the hooligans that there will be a lifetime ban of games if any one is caught inciting violence during games.

The good practices highlighted in this blog indicate that the prevention of football hooliganism depends on the efforts of a variety of institutions and agents. If there is no relationship building and active enforcement in accordance to hooliganism violence there will be no improvement on the violence during games. The main goal for football clubs and police deportments is the lower the football violence and the only way to do so is the continuous responses to problems that arise.

References:

"Psychology and Crime News / Football hooliganism: comparing self-awareness and social identity theory explanations." Psychology and Crime News / A place to collate information of interest in a forensic psychological context. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. .

http://www.cafyd.com/HistDeporte/htm/pdf/4-16.pdf