Have you had any experience with encounters with football hooligans in your country?
March 29, 2025
Are they still common where you live?
15 comments
No.
It’s wild to me that people still think of English football as having issues that haven’t existed on a noticeable scale for over 30 years.
And the Scots get a positive reputation, despite having easily the heaviest policed fixture in the British football calendar. Make it make sense
Not nearly as common here as further down in Europe, or even in Sweden and Denmark, but clashes happen ever so often before big matches.
Police presence is bigger when «high risk» teams meet, and they often try to schedule these matches on sundays to reduce drinking etc. Supporters will be given separate routes to walk to the stadium so they don’t meet. Some teams have organized fighting groups. The fighting will either happen spontaneous in the city centre or at pubs, or organized at secluded places outside the city.
My impression is that most of the people participating in this don’t really care a lot about the football itself, but mostly for the fighting. Mostly young men from a lower sosioeconomic background with a lack of community.
I wouldn’t go as far as ‘common’ but they certainly still exist.
I am a fairly regular stadium-going fan,my team (and city) is Palermo.
We have a large fan base for a team in Serie B.Also a good number of fans who are banned from the stadium, most of those for what might be described as ‘hooligan’ stuff… fighting with supporters of other teams, for example.
Trouble inside the stadium is rare these days.Sometimes there are fights between rival groups of Palermo fans though.
The bigger problems are with away matches, but the’hooliganism’ there tends to be outside…on the train,at motorway service stations or in the city.
If we play fierce rivals (like Catania) their fans are completely banned from coming to the stadium, and we are banned from going there too….
Not any more. Footie in England has much more of a diverse audience these days and with the price of season tickets I’m not surprised. Two of my mates have season tickets for Tottenham – one is the Head of Dept in a private school and the other is a retired finance manager – they have been going for years and the last time I spoke they said they had never seen anything other than a few bits of shoving\shouting.
Many years ago, I was on an underground train in North London and Millwall had just played Arsenal. They let all the Millwall fans out first, so they got on the tube en masse. It was rough esp for the one Arsenal fan who got caught up in the middle of it – they slapped him a couple of times and tried to set his scarf alight, but they got off again pretty quickly. If you were’t obviously part of the crew then they were just annoying but I guess the Arsenal fan was shitting himself for a few mins…
Not really in my own country, but since I support Roma and have been to over 150+ games in Italy I have had many there.
I live close to Barça stadium, I have seen all kind of supporters, the only ones really making trouble here were Antwerp fans a couple of years ago.
In south east Asia football hooligans are known as English.
It used to be worse in the 90s but nowadays it only tends to go wrong only in international club matches. Police has the locals under control.
Only at a match against Marseilles. There had been a match fixing scandal between the local club and OM in the 90s, and at the first match since that scandal, there were some fights and stupidity. Hundreds and hundreds of cops though.
Not personally, since I tend to avoid those situations, but hooligan fights do definitely happen in my city, in particular around derby matches.
The most heated derbies here right now are between my city’s team Helsingborgs IF and Landskrona BoIS from the neighboring town. Both teams currently play in the second tier of Swedish football, and on those games there are frequent fights and destruction. Fortunately the hooligans mostly target each other, or else the police who try to break things up, but sadly it does happen that innocent people get hurt as well, and of course the property destruction hurts many people as well.
By far the worst derbies though used to be between Helsingborgs IF and the most hated regional rival Malmö FF, when Helsingborg was still in the top tier. Those games could very frequently create a lot of big fights and property destruction, even in the city center – and all the way from the train station to the football arena.
Besides the Scanian derbies, the other big hooligan games were those against the big Stockholm teams. Those teams have by far the most violent and fanatical hooligan supporters, and are deeply disliked by the Helsingborg hooligans in turn. There were also fights with the hooligans of IFK Göteborg, which are also seen as traditional rivals.
But again, all of those teams still play in the top tier, so Helsingborg don’t really play them much anymore, other than possibly in cup games. So, I guess that one positive thing about being demoted to the second tier is much less hooligan fights and city destruction over all, and more safe and family friendly football games which is course great. Helsingborg are one of the favorites for promotion this season though, so we’ll see how that goes.
Iceland doesn’t have football hooligans, but when I was a bouncer we had a clash with some foreign ones during a world cup series. In the early 2000s there were groups of violent thugs who were often also football players or football fanatics but none of their violence was ever football related so I don’t think they truly qualify.
Once and it was just a “4. Liga” match. Nearly got beat up by some idiots who thought i would belong to the opposite teams “Ultras” This was my first and last football match. I don’t like football anyway but thought i give it a try.
I have a season ticket to my local club in EFL league 1. The closest thing to hooligans is 14-17 year olds who watched green street a few to many times. In reality all they do is shout abuse from the behind the safety of the stewards and the rest of the fans base finds them cringy.
Yes, when I was younger.
Now I’m not among these fan groups
Not in Ireland; most self-styled hooligans grow out of that phase by their early 20s and move on with their lives. I lived in Poland for three years in the 2000s, where it was a much bigger problem, especially with fans of Legia Warszawa and Şląsk Wrocław.
15 comments
No.
It’s wild to me that people still think of English football as having issues that haven’t existed on a noticeable scale for over 30 years.
And the Scots get a positive reputation, despite having easily the heaviest policed fixture in the British football calendar. Make it make sense
Not nearly as common here as further down in Europe, or even in Sweden and Denmark, but clashes happen ever so often before big matches.
Police presence is bigger when «high risk» teams meet, and they often try to schedule these matches on sundays to reduce drinking etc. Supporters will be given separate routes to walk to the stadium so they don’t meet. Some teams have organized fighting groups. The fighting will either happen spontaneous in the city centre or at pubs, or organized at secluded places outside the city.
My impression is that most of the people participating in this don’t really care a lot about the football itself, but mostly for the fighting. Mostly young men from a lower sosioeconomic background with a lack of community.
I wouldn’t go as far as ‘common’ but they certainly still exist.
I am a fairly regular stadium-going fan,my team (and city) is Palermo.
We have a large fan base for a team in Serie B.Also a good number of fans who are banned from the stadium, most of those for what might be described as ‘hooligan’ stuff… fighting with supporters of other teams, for example.
Trouble inside the stadium is rare these days.Sometimes there are fights between rival groups of Palermo fans though.
The bigger problems are with away matches, but the’hooliganism’ there tends to be outside…on the train,at motorway service stations or in the city.
If we play fierce rivals (like Catania) their fans are completely banned from coming to the stadium, and we are banned from going there too….
Not any more. Footie in England has much more of a diverse audience these days and with the price of season tickets I’m not surprised. Two of my mates have season tickets for Tottenham – one is the Head of Dept in a private school and the other is a retired finance manager – they have been going for years and the last time I spoke they said they had never seen anything other than a few bits of shoving\shouting.
Many years ago, I was on an underground train in North London and Millwall had just played Arsenal. They let all the Millwall fans out first, so they got on the tube en masse. It was rough esp for the one Arsenal fan who got caught up in the middle of it – they slapped him a couple of times and tried to set his scarf alight, but they got off again pretty quickly. If you were’t obviously part of the crew then they were just annoying but I guess the Arsenal fan was shitting himself for a few mins…
Not really in my own country, but since I support Roma and have been to over 150+ games in Italy I have had many there.
I live close to Barça stadium, I have seen all kind of supporters, the only ones really making trouble here were Antwerp fans a couple of years ago.
In south east Asia football hooligans are known as English.
It used to be worse in the 90s but nowadays it only tends to go wrong only in international club matches. Police has the locals under control.
Only at a match against Marseilles. There had been a match fixing scandal between the local club and OM in the 90s, and at the first match since that scandal, there were some fights and stupidity. Hundreds and hundreds of cops though.
Not personally, since I tend to avoid those situations, but hooligan fights do definitely happen in my city, in particular around derby matches.
The most heated derbies here right now are between my city’s team Helsingborgs IF and Landskrona BoIS from the neighboring town. Both teams currently play in the second tier of Swedish football, and on those games there are frequent fights and destruction. Fortunately the hooligans mostly target each other, or else the police who try to break things up, but sadly it does happen that innocent people get hurt as well, and of course the property destruction hurts many people as well.
By far the worst derbies though used to be between Helsingborgs IF and the most hated regional rival Malmö FF, when Helsingborg was still in the top tier. Those games could very frequently create a lot of big fights and property destruction, even in the city center – and all the way from the train station to the football arena.
Besides the Scanian derbies, the other big hooligan games were those against the big Stockholm teams. Those teams have by far the most violent and fanatical hooligan supporters, and are deeply disliked by the Helsingborg hooligans in turn. There were also fights with the hooligans of IFK Göteborg, which are also seen as traditional rivals.
But again, all of those teams still play in the top tier, so Helsingborg don’t really play them much anymore, other than possibly in cup games. So, I guess that one positive thing about being demoted to the second tier is much less hooligan fights and city destruction over all, and more safe and family friendly football games which is course great. Helsingborg are one of the favorites for promotion this season though, so we’ll see how that goes.
Iceland doesn’t have football hooligans, but when I was a bouncer we had a clash with some foreign ones during a world cup series. In the early 2000s there were groups of violent thugs who were often also football players or football fanatics but none of their violence was ever football related so I don’t think they truly qualify.
Once and it was just a “4. Liga” match. Nearly got beat up by some idiots who thought i would belong to the opposite teams “Ultras” This was my first and last football match. I don’t like football anyway but thought i give it a try.
I have a season ticket to my local club in EFL league 1. The closest thing to hooligans is 14-17 year olds who watched green street a few to many times. In reality all they do is shout abuse from the behind the safety of the stewards and the rest of the fans base finds them cringy.
Yes, when I was younger.
Now I’m not among these fan groups
Not in Ireland; most self-styled hooligans grow out of that phase by their early 20s and move on with their lives. I lived in Poland for three years in the 2000s, where it was a much bigger problem, especially with fans of Legia Warszawa and Şląsk Wrocław.