WHY IS HOOLIGANISM LINKED TO FOOTBALL?
7.1 In many ways, football is seen as an appropriate venue for these sorts of aggressive rivalries, partly because of the working class roots and traditions of the game but also because of the culturally prescribed ‘territorial’ and masculine values which are intrinsic to it. In England a football match is a kind of symbolic struggle between the representatives of predominantly working class male communities. Terrace fights go beyond this symbolic representation to a ‘real’ struggle between young men who have strong masculine attachments to their own areas, teams and friends, and a considerable emotional investment in performing in a ‘manly’ way when confrontations occur. 7.2 Often, the most celebrated football players for fans of this kind are those who have their own reputations for ‘hardness’ and aggression on the field. A top English player was fined £20,000 by the FA a few years ago for his role in the production of a video about the game’s ‘hard men’. However, over the longer per
