History of Hooligans
By When did football related violence first become a problem? The history of hooligans can be traced way back to 14th century England. Back then it wasn’t so much the beautiful game as a rowdy mass brawl between rival villages, kicking a pigs bladder across town.
King Edward II believed this could lead to social unrest and banned the game. For cases of football hooliganism in the modern game, fast forward to the 1880’s. That’s when the so called ‘roughs’ started causing trouble at football matches, attacking rival fans and players, as well as referees.
The modern day history of hooligans came about a century later. Starting in the 60’s, clashes between rival supporters evolved into organised fights between large gangs of hardcore fans, the so called firms. In first 5 years of the 60’s decade there had been more violence than in he previous 25 years combined.
British hooliganism spread rapidly in the 70’s and 80’s becoming known abroad as the English disease. It reached it’s tragic peak at the European Cup final in 1985, when the Liverpool fans attacked there Italian rivals, causing a wall in the stadium to collapse, killing 39 people. After the disaster English teams were banned from all European contests and Thatchers government launched a clampdown on football related violence.
By the 1990’s football violence in the UK gradually began to wane but the reputation stuck. When in England failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup in the USA, the commitee chief was delighted there would be no England fans.
In the coming years many International tournaments were marred by badly behaved England fans. Nowadays football hooliganism is not only an English but International disease. The rise of European hooligans most notably from Russia and Eastern Europe, have taken the violence to another level.
