England

After Rolls Royce Cars and Mr Bean, England’s most famous export must surely be its football hooligans. Wherever they’re due to arrive the local police call in reinforcements and there’s rarely a big tournament where a few English hooligans aren’t physically deported.

After Rolls Royce Cars and Mr Bean, England’s most famous export must surely be its football hooligans. Wherever they’re due to arrive the local police call in reinforcements and there’s rarely a big tournament where a few English hooligans aren’t physically deported.

Of course, football hooligans exist everywhere – head to a football match anywhere in the world and you’ll hear the same chorus of grunts, curses and oafish cheers. Whilst this might indeed indicate some kind of cross-cultural gene, the English are renowned for being amongst the worst thugs the world has ever seen.

Football hooliganism really took off in the 1980’s when followers of teams in England took the ritual taunting of the opponent fans a step further; organising themselves into gangs, armed to the teeth with screw drivers, sticks and broken bottles, they held pitched battles before, after and during the games. The actual football match faded into oblivion – the real business of the day was to maim the opponent fans before they knew what hit them.

In many ways, this kind of militant hooliganism was only a return to the origins of football itself which grew up in England. The original matches involved a few thousand people on each side and were held over days in the English countryside. The point was to take the ball from one post to the other over a distance of a mile and there were no other rules whatsoever. It was considered a good move to hide indoors during the football matches and hope none of the hooligans would break into your home.

The English police have put a good deal of time and energy into isolating the ringleaders of football hooliganism and the days of tribal warfare have largely passed into history. Still, if going to a football game in England you’d be ill advised to look any group of young hooligans in the eye lest they should throw half a brick in your direction and shout:

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

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