Today I will tell you something about violence in sports, the so called "Hooliganism". For that reason, I will firstly give you some information about it in general. After that I will present some measures against it and in the final step I take a quick look at the German Hooligan scene.

General information

Let´s start with some general information.
The word “hooliganism” comes from the Irish expression “houlie” which means having a wild party.
It describes a kind of crowed violence at sporting events, mostly fights between supporters of different football clubs, which exists in it´ s modern form since 1960 in the United Kingdom. This origin is responsible for the byname “British Illness”.
The real hooligans do not fight independent – Supporters of the same football club pool together in some kind of gangs, which are called football firms. These firms arrange the battles. In the majority of cases, these fights between two supporter groups are at the same day as the match between the two affected football clubs. But this is not every time the case.

Police sorts the active football fans in 3 different categories, namely category A, B and C.
The “normal” and peaceful fans belong to category A.
Fans that will be violent if the right opportunity is given are summarized in category B.
Category C includes the hard-core hooligans that are always looking for a fight.

(Measures against hooliganism)

Hooligans compare having a fight with taking drugs. Craig Hughes, the best known hooligan in the world, said: “If you had a fight onces, you can not stop the longing for another fight. You want and you need the adrenalin rush, no matter if you got hurt yourself!”
The government and the decision-makers of the English Premiere League realized this fact too. As a result, there first aim is not to stop the hooliganism totally because this would be an irresolvable mission. So, they focus on forcing the violence out of the stadiums.
By the following measures they want to achieve this aim:
The stadiums of the Premiere League have all been improved. Stabile fences to keep the fan-groups apart of each other and video cameras to supervise the fans are only two of many changes.
All stadiums changed into “Allseater-stadiums”, means that there are no more standing places. By that change the decision-makers wanted to avoid anymore overcrowded blocks, because by this reason in year 1989 almost 100 Liverpool-supporters died as a panic started.
The ticket prices raised about 40%. Nowadays an adult has to pay for a normal ticket at least 50 British pounds, which is about 56 euro.
Undercover cops (called “spotters”) who creep in the different firms to find out when and where the next fight will go on, have reduced the number of battles too.


An international phenomenon – Hooligans in Germany

At the latest from 1970 the hooligan phenomenon arrived Germany. These acts of violence end in the death of an 16 year old fan from Werder Bremen who has been killed by right wing extremists in year 1982.
After a police-report, there are still 10.500 German men who are classified in category B or C. Most of them support different clubs from Berlin or clubs out of the former East Germany. But there is a hope: According to some specialists the German hooligan-scene is dying bit by bit off.