soccer

Bill Buford, a naive American adrift in England, tackles a very dicey subject: Mob violence by English football fans. He starts out innocently enough, trying to find the allure, cause, nature, basis, and form of England's notorious football hooligans, but soon has difficulty separating himself from his subject matter.

As he relates his journey into the world of the yobs, we get a vivid picture of the people and the events, but no real glimpse into what is behind the football mob violence -- even after Buford spends most of the second half of the book trying to work it out. The only real insight were provided is that the mob becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and that there is a line where a person within the mob ceases to be an individual, and becomes a compnent of a greater organism.

However, questions such as why sporting crowds in the US, Canada, or other countries never reach the level of violence or mob mentality as seen in England are never addressed, nor are questions of why this sort of violent behavior seems to be limited to a very large degree to football (soccer) crowds. Of course, that subject is beyond the scope of any one book.

Still, the snapshot into the seedy world of NF members, jingoistic supporters, drunks and felons provided by Buford is entertaining, in a voyeuristic sort of way. Besides, unless you are intimately familiar with crowds at English, or any European, football matches, Buford's book is best if taken as a sort of superficial sociological travelogue, offering a glimpse into a strange land, complete with foreign customs, traditions, uniforms and etiquette.

Reading 'Thugs' won't provide too much enlightentment on sports violence or the psychology of mobs, but it will entertain. And with the coming Euro2000 tournament, reading this may prove timely, as well.

It was Bill Shankly, ex Liverpool manager, who said "Football is'nt a matter of life and death, it's more important than that". This book goes someway to capture the passion and importance of Football in English culture, and the extreme lengths that some so called supporters go to feel that they belong. As a true English Football supporter, I felt somewhat annoyed that readers of the book from other countries would feel that all English Football supporters behave in this manner, this is NOT true. But this book does accurately portray the minority who caused and still cause the atrocities described. The book works on two levels, to shock with horrific stories of brutal violence, and at a much deeper level to explain crowd behaviour and how this can be manipulated. Overall this is a valiant attempt by an American to explain English Football violence, which to my suprise was successfull.

I thought this book would simply be a blow-by-blow recitation of the crimes and violence perpetrated by Britain's soccer "hooligans." I was very pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be much, much more. Mr. Buford gives a very nice discussion of the crowd mentality and explains from a first-hand perspective how quickly a large event can turn violent. He also does a nice job of explaining how the social environment in Britain led to the conditions that allowed large number of disaffected young men with few other outlets for their frustrations than Saturday games and riots.