
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the old football firms were big news.
Hooliganism was known internationally as ‘The English Disease’, perhaps unfairly given the prevalence of the Italian and Spanish Ultras, the Argentine Barra Bravas, and others, but it was certainly a huge issue in the UK.
Well known ‘firms’ such as the Inter City Firm or ICF (West Ham), the Zulu Warriors (Birmingham), the Bushwackers (Millwall), and the Red Army or Inter City Jibbers (Manchester United) caused chaos in the stands. Then they caused chaos in the streets. Some were even involved in organised crime, especially when traveling abroad. They would exploit the fact that the local police were dealing with football violence and rob jewellers and the like.
Things began to change after the Heysel disaster in 1985 and then the Taylor Report in 1990. The grounds themselves were redesigned to make them safer, and this made hooliganism more difficult. At the same time, technology was rapidly improving and the use of cameras along with improved policing stopped much of the violence before it could begin.
In the early 2000s, films like Green Street and The Football Factory re-introduced the concept to a generation who were probably too young to remember it from back in the day, but there was something of a resurgence as ‘youth firms’ began to develop to take the place of their older counterparts.
Harsh sentences for those causing problems and further improvements to security put the final nail in the coffin for these groups though, and while we do still hear about football violence, it is barely recognisable as the hooliganism that existed in the 20th century.
Football Violence Today

Any event where tens of thousands of people come together in the same place is going to result in frictions, but football has a few added ingredients which tend to increase tensions.
You have two opposing sides for a start so there is a natural ‘us vs them’ vibe, then heated old rivalries can reignite, plus the fan demographic of mostly young men who are statistically more likely to lash out if they feel threatened or belittled in some way.
So yes, football violence still exists, but minor scraps and skirmishes between small groups of supporters are a far cry from the organised chaos of 50 years ago.
Data released by the Government in November of 2023 made for interesting reading on the subject.
Of all the matches in the 2022/23 seasons where incidents were reported, only 9% were classed as severe, with 62% classed as low severity. These low severity incidents of disorder include things like throwing missiles (bottles, coins, sausage rolls, whatever) and even hate crimes, so it’s a million miles away from a mass brawl.
The 2022/23 season saw a record the highest number of fans attending domestic and international men’s football since records began – more than 45 million. Out of that lot, there were just 2,264 football related arrests a miniscule arrest rate of just 0.005%.
Interestingly, the vast majority of those arrests occurred at international matches:
Looking at this chart, it seems the higher in the football pyramid you go, the less trouble you find. This shows how effective surveillance, ground security, and policing has been in reducing hooliganism. I’m surprised by the trouble at National League level though.
Most arrests are for public disorder rather than violent disorder, although violent disorder arrests have increased slightly from 16% in 2013/14 to 21% in 2022/23.
Still, that’s 21% of a very small number of arrests – it works out as around 475 arrests for violence out of 45 million supporters.
Here is how the arrests break down by type over the last decade:
You could look at these statistics and claim that football violence is on the rise, but again, we are talking about such small numbers that while it might technically be true, it’s hardly solid evidence that hooligan firms are back.
The truth is that the ‘firms’ that survive are little more than pub gangs these days. They aren’t able to cause problems at football grounds like they used to, and most don’t even try.
There might be a lot of noise and rude gestures from the stands, there might even be a bit of pushing and shoving around the ground sometimes, but it’s mostly between a handful of people rather than an organised group and rarely goes much further than a tussle.
When violence does erupt at the stadiums themselves, it tends to be between the English and fans of European clubs. Leicester and Napoli fans famously clashed inside the King Power Stadium in 2021, and the fighting continued in the streets around a mile from the ground too.
Then there was the attack on West Ham fans by AZ Alkmaar fans in 2023 after the Hammers won the Europa Conference League semi-final. A handful of West Ham supporters held off the AZ ‘Ben Side’ Ultras who were attempting to reach an area of the stadium where the players’ families were sitting. This was at the AFAS Stadion in the Netherlands though, home of AZ Alkmaar, and it wasn’t initiated by English fans.
Going Underground
The above relates to trouble caused at the football, but because efforts to rid football of violence have been so successful in the UK, the firms that still exist find it impossible to cause trouble at the stadiums themselves.
Many have essentially withered away because of this, but those that haven’t have had to find another way to get their fix.
So what do they do?
Well, these hooligan groups are all in contact with each other via anonymous messaging apps and the like, so they arrange to meet somewhere else. Somewhere discreet where they are unlikely to be interrupted by police, and they fight there.
This sort of thing is much more common in Europe than in the UK. Firms will meet in remote forests, fields or wasteland and bash the living daylights out of each other.
But even though the two sides fighting are supporters of two opposing football clubs, if the fights don’t happen anywhere near the ground can it still be classed as football violence or is it something else? A kind of Fight Club/Football hybrid. For me, it enters a different category.
Although not as organised or as regular in the UK, there are still occasional brawls such as the one between Sunderland’s Seaburn Casuals and the Newcastle Gremlins in 2009. They are not as severe as those in Europe though, and very rare.
What Caused Hooliganism?

Tribalism is a human condition. Just try and talk to someone about a political or topical issue and you’ll see what I mean. People pick a side and they dig in.
Football hooliganism is just another form of tribalism in a way, although there is more to it than that.
If you look at the socio-economic landscape back in the 1960s when it first started to become a real issue, football hooligans were mostly made up of working class young men. They were poor, they came from tough areas, and they needed an outlet for their emotions.
This developed over time. Once these firms were established and the ‘top boys’ got older, they began to dress in designer clothes and became the Casuals. Younger fans would see this and want to emulate them, so they joined the firms and tried to prove themselves on the terraces.
As we went from the 20th to the 21st century, life in England changed a lot. On the whole, people were much better off. Kids had video game consoles, colour TVs, DVD players and Walkmans. Adults could afford more designer clothes, cars, holidays.
People didn’t have the same rage, their lives were happier and they had plenty of interesting ways to fill their time. There was something all of this ‘stuff’ couldn’t replace though.
What has really tied the hooligan movement together, is the urge to belong to something. We used to feel so much more connected to our country, our society, our local community. Over recent decades though, people have become more insular and less connected. Life has been good so we have not had anything to fight for, nothing to create bonds and bring people together.
Knocking people out at the football is a poor replacement for this, but if you watch any of the many documentaries on the subject and every single interviewee will say they became addicted to fighting because it made them feel part of something.
They were representing their team, their area, their firm. They were part of something bigger than themselves and they wanted people’s respect for that. They couldn’t find what they needed anywhere else, so they created it themselves.
In one documentary, a young Wolves fan said of his firm:
“Everyone knows. You don’t come to Wolves and take the piss.”
For him, it was about standing up and being counted, and what he was doing really mattered. To you and me it sounds juvenile and mindless, but to young men who were not affluent and have nothing else to belong to, it was a reason to exist.
All of these things contributed to the wave of football hooliganism that spanned half a century or so.