Why do football fans react so violently when their team loses? A new book looks for answers

Football is a carefully regulated sport, especially at the highest levels. The penalties for violent conduct can be significant. But this was not always the case, and from the beginning, football was a rough game. Shoulder barges, hard tackling, and kicking shins were common ways to break up opponents’ rushes. Fights and other violent events can be routine among players or fans.

In 1927, Uruguayan club Nacional toured the United States. The team featured several of Uruguay’s recent gold medal-winning side, including José Leandro Andrade. In several cities, violence among players broke out on the pitch, triggering pitch invasions by fans. On April 19, the Uruguayans were in Massachusetts to face the Boston Wonder Workers. It was a close game on a hot day when a fight broke out between players. A Wonder Workers player fell to the ground. Enraged fans rushed the field and attacked the visitors. Local police restored order, but the game was called off. In this case the violence was unplanned, but in other times and places, people have gone to games with the intent to commit violence. Broadly, this type of behaviour is known as hooliganism.

Violence and disorder have been a part of football in England since at least the 1870s, when the sport began to achieve widespread popularity. The concept of hooliganism as a major problem emerged in the 1960s and reached a peak in the 1980s. Young men formed gangs called firms and spent time fighting, drinking, and doing drugs.

Many teams had such groups associated with them, but some of the most notorious came from the followers of London clubs. The firms included Headhunters (Chelsea), Inter City Firm (West Ham United), and Bushwackers (Millwall). Although centred on a specific team, it was less about being a superfan and more about defending the honour of your club and city. Joining gave members a sense of belonging and a chance to establish a reputation as a willing and capable fighter. Many firm members avoided wearing club merchandise and instead adopted specific clothing brands to signal their membership in the group.

Often, fights took place away from the stadium, and not just on match days. It was common for representatives of two crews to meet and arrange the details of where and when the combat would take place. One former hooligan noted, “It was organised that we would go and meet them and fight with ’em. That’s what we were going for.” Violence at stadiums included attacks on rival fans, throwing objects into the stands or onto the field, and clashes with police. Such actions contributed to the grim atmosphere at many stadiums during the period. Football became associated with violence and attendance declined. Hooliganism also contributed directly or indirectly to some of the larger disasters that took place in the 1980s.

During the 1990s, a number of former crew members published memoirs. Many of these accounts romanticised the hooligan life as ‘hit and tell’ books, often fictionalising events.

The term “ultra” emerged in Italy in the late 1960s but has since been taken up by fans around the world. It can be a difficult word to define. Being an ultra is about more than just loving your team. Journalist Pierluigi Spagnolo called it “a seven-day-a-week routine where that group becomes your life, your structure, your social circle”. As in England, the motivation was partly about loyalty to a club but perhaps even more about defending your community. Manager Helenio Herrera encouraged the formation of fan groups, precursors to ultras, because he felt they gave his team an edge during games as a ‘twelfth player’.

The first Italian ultra group, the Fossa dei Leoni (Lion’s Den), formed in 1968 around the club AC Milan. Within a decade, similar organisations appeared at clubs around the country. The groups tended to stand in the cheapest section of the stadium, known as the curvas, or curved spaces, directly behind the goals. Over time, groups were identified by the stand they came from, such as the Curva Sud (south curve). The ultras were known for drumming, waving flags, singing songs, and launching flares during games. They also produced coordinated displays featuring large banners that would come to be called tifos, from the Italian word for fans (tifosi).

Like the firms in England, violence became a key feature of the ultra groups. In some ways, they reflected broader trends in Italy during the 1960s–80s, which were called the Years of Lead (Anni di Piombo) because there were so many political killings. Injuries and deaths followed, with one of the most notorious being the death of Lazio fan, Vincenzo Paparelli, in 1979 when a flare fired by rival ultras struck him in the head. Some ultra groups took on political affiliations ranging from the radical left to fascism and neo-Nazism. International links tied Italian ultras to like-minded fan groups around Europe. Eventually, the authorities aggressively cracked down on the ultras in an attempt to limit the violence. In response, many groups came to see the government and, increasingly, corporate clubs as an enemy greater than their team’s fiercest rival. Today, although they have a reputation for violent conduct, many ultra groups perform important works of social service and charity, perhaps as an extension of the idea that they have a responsibility to defend their community.

Excerpted with permission from The Shortest History of Football, Brian D Bunk, Pan Macmillan India.