Draws on research from Britain, Europe, Argentina and the USA to explore the culture and loyalties of soccer players and crowds.

Drawing on research from Britain, Europe, Argentina and the USA this volume examines the culture and loyalties of soccer players and crowds and their relationships to social order, disorder and violence. This informative and accessible book will be of interest to students of Sport Science and to all of those who love the game of soccer.

The game of football has played a key role in shaping and cementing senses of national identity throughout the world. Aware that the game may afford a space for expressing protest, groups may attempt to harness the forces of populist nationalism. This book examines football in 18 countries.

Football hooliganism periodically generates widespread political and public anxiety. In spite of the efforts made and resources invested over the past decades, football hooliganism is still perceived by politicians, policymakers and media as a disturbing social problem. This highly readable book provides the first systematic and empirically grounded comparison of football hooliganism in different national and local contexts. Focused around the six Western European football clubs on which the author did his research, the book shows how different clubs experience and understand football hooliganism in different ways. The development and effects of anti-hooligan policies are also assessed. The emphasis throughout is on the importance of context, social interaction and collective identity for understanding football hooliganism. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in football culture, hooliganism and collective violence.

This book examines how groups of young male fans come to be defined and identified as football `hooligans and challenges the assumption that violence is wholly central to the match-day experience for these supporters. Rather, the creation of identity is at the root of hooliganism, with all the cultural values and rituals, codes of honour and shame, and communal patterns of behaviour and consumption that accompany it. The author locates hooliganism historically within the milieu of an industrial working class culture and examines ideas of performance and ritual encompassed in idealized masculinity. The book is based on a decades in-depth study of the `Blades, a group of football fans supporting Sheffield United, who are notorious for their hooliganism. It contributes to the debate on football hooliganism by challenging many traditionally-held notions of hooliganism and by providing the first anthropological study of football violence. The book also debunks the myth that violence between football fans is organized by `generals operating within hierarchically structured groups. Falsehoods such as this, it is argued, are advanced to augment the powers of the police and media in redefining and controlling particular groups of individuals whose behaviour does not fit easily within increasingly constrictive codes of social conduct. This book represents essential reading not only for undergraduates of social anthropology, sociology and criminology but also for the general reader with an interest in football culture.

Most sociological work on football fandom has focused on the experience of men, and it usually talks about alcohol, fighting and general hooliganism. This book shows that there are some unique facets of female experience and fascinating negotiations of identity within the male-dominated world of men's professional football.

Focusing on a number of contemporary research themes and placing them within the context of palpable changes that have occurred within football in recent years, this timely collection brings together essays about football, crime and fan behaviour from leading experts in the fields of criminology, law, sociology, psychology and cultural studies.