Spectator Violence

Violence at or in conjunction with sports events can involve spectators in one of three ways: Players may attack spectators, spectators may attack players or match officials, or spectators may fight among themselves. Probably the most frequently [Page 1553]reported form of spectator violence in the modern world is the so-called problem of football or soccer hooliganism, a form that involves attacks on players, match officials, and, above all, fights between spectator groups. Soccer hooliganism generally refers to any spectator violence at or in conjunction with Association football (soccer in the United States and Canada) matches or associated with groups that claim allegiance to soccer clubs. (Soccer is a corruption of the term association. It refers to “Association football,” originally developed by the English Football Association in 1863.)

Following the publicity given to the death of thirtynine Italians at the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus at the Heysel Stadium, Brussels, in 1985, it came to be widely believed that hooliganism is mainly an English problem. Research, however, suggests that this is not and has never been the case, as indicated by the data in Table 1.

If asked, a majority of Europeans would probably identify Heysel as the worst hooligan-related football tragedy to have occurred in modern times. However, other incidents have been far more serious (see Table 2). Football outside Europe has experienced a greater number of fatalities and perhaps also a greater incidence of murderous violence.

Sketchy though they are, the figures on footballrelated murders point in the same direction (see Table 3). Italy, the European country with the highest reported incidence of football-related murders in the years 1996–1999, had five deaths, whereas Argentina, largely as a result of the activities of the notorious barras bravas, had a reported incidence of thirty-nine, almost eight times as many (see also Duke and Crolley 1996).

Analysis of a range of statements made by English hooligans over a period of more than thirty years revealed that for the young men involved, football hooligan fighting is basically about masculinity, territorial struggle, and excitement (Dunning 1999). For them, fighting is a central source of meaning, status or “reputation,” and pleasurable emotional arousal. They speak of the respect among their peers that they hope their hooligan involvement will bring, and they refer to “battle excitement,” “the adrenaline racing,” and “aggro” as almost erotically arousing. Indeed, Jay Allan, a leading member of the Aberdeen Casuals, a Scottish football hooligan “firm” in the 1980s, described fighting at football as even more pleasurable than sex (Allan 1989). Author Bill Buford, who traveled with English football hooligans in the 1980s, wrote that “violence is one of the most intensely lived experiences and, for those capable of giving themselves over to it, one of the most intense pleasures…. [C]rowd violence was their drug” (1991: 201).

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