Football Hooliganism

Hooliganism has been among the most popular topics in football studies for decades. To some observers, the issue is well and truly over-researched (Moorhouse, 2000) and has ‘unreasonably biased research into football, so that issues such as the administration of the game and its political economy have been wrongly relegated to a secondary position’ (King, 2002: 3). Yet, others argue that football-related violence still warrants systematic academic research. Virtually every country around the world has experienced spectator violence at football matches (Giulianotti et al., 1994; Dunning et al., 2002). In recent years, countries as diverse as Brazil, Sweden, Egypt and Italy have been rocked by football-related deaths (Duarte et al., 2013). The question of how to combat football hooliganism continues to feature on the political and policy agendas of many countries. Over the past thirty years national and international governing bodies have introduced a raft of regulations, policies and strategies to control and prevent violence at all levels of the game (e.g. Asser Institute, 2004; Tsoukala, 2009; Council of the European Union, 2010). This has involved the progressive consolidation and expansion of judicial powers, stadium security measures, policing tactics and special investigative techniques in the ght against fan violence (Tsoukala, 2009; Spaaij, 2013).