Soccer Hooliganism

Soccer Hooliganism

The problem of soccer hooliganism has its roots deep in social development and is associated with aggression and maturation rituals. Furthermore, the media has negatively impacted the problem by publicizing, and exaggerating hooligan activities.
Although the exact definition of hooliganism is rather open-ended, it can be characterized as violence toward opposing fans, players, and refs or destruction of objects inside or around the stadium. Violent incidents that occur following a game that fans perpetrate are also often considered acts of hooliganism (Soccer 2).
What we know today as hooliganism began in Britain in the late nineteen-sixties. Riots, field invasions, beatings, and deaths were characterized by the media as "football hooligans," and thus came era of violence to soccer. As shocking as the violence was at that time, soccer and violence have gone hand and hand since the thirteenth century. The game used to be played for a variety of reason disputes over land, conflicts between neighboring tribes or just simply to engage in manly aggression. Often times in Scotland, a "football" match was a precursor to a raid into a neighboring town. Since this time, soccer has been refined greatly especially in1828, when Dr. Thomas Arnold established formal rules for the game. The game continued to be refined, and was seen as a game of the upper class until the game gained popularity with the middle class in the early twentieth century. (Soccer 4)
Although sporadic violence occurred from 1900 to 1960, it was attributed to nothing more than overzealous, or drunk fans. In the 1964 soccer season, fan began to take on a rather peculiar pastime called "taking ends," where fans on one side of the stadium would rush the opposing fans' side and try to take control of their section. These acts of violence, team identification, and ritual aggression developed in a few short years into the social epidemic of soccer hooliganism. (Soccer 7)
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