Geoff Pearson doesn't just research Football Hooligans, he became one. Studying the culture surrounding Football related violence by infiltrating the notorious groups. We talk Football Hooliganism, the most violent Firms, Police mistakes and why after decades of decline, Football Hooliganism is rising again. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Worst Team Names.
Professor Geoff Pearson: 01:51
Pointless: 37:30
Top 5: 1:00:05
nickvinzant@gmail.com (Show Email)
316-530-7719 (Show voicemail)
https://twitter.com/geoff_pearson (Professor Geoff Pearson Twitter)
Football Hooligan Researcher Professor Geoff Pearson: Interview
Nick VinZant 0:12
Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode football hooligans and terrible team names,
Professor Geoff Pearson 0:22
vandalism, disorder, antisocial behavior, rioting in stadiums, mass disorder, more serious organized gang violence, the fighting that the firms do is only a very small part of what I'm about the method that I chose to investigate football crowd behavior than football crowd regulation was to go covertly. But yeah, the vast bulk of major football disorder. So those sort of major riots that we see from time to time, almost always caused by a breakdown in crowd management. Okay, the police have done something wrong.
Nick VinZant 1:02
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance to subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thanks for all of your support. So our first guest researches football slash soccer violence and football hooligans all over the world. But he does this research in a unique way, by infiltrating these groups. And Matt has really left him with a unique perspective on why this is happening, who's doing it, and why this football related violence is suddenly on the rise again, this is Professor Jeff Pearson. The term that I always hear is football soccer hooligan. Does that still apply? Or is that kind of like a medium term that was come up with
Professor Geoff Pearson 1:59
I mean, it's it's a term that was created by the media in some time around the late 1950s. And is increasingly or was increasingly then used pretty much across the world to the third to lots of different types of misbehavior by football fans. So it could refer to vandalism, disorder, antisocial behavior, rioting in stadiums, mass disorder, more serious organized gang violence between different groups of crowds. So it was always a very imprecise label
Nick VinZant 2:36
is a hooligan the same as a firm? Or is that something different?
Professor Geoff Pearson 2:41
So a firm is a term that's used to refer to a gang of fans of a particular team that gather together with the intention of engaging in violence, usually against a rival firm supporting a different team. So if you define a hooligan as being somebody you could define hooligan, as being somebody that was a member of a of a firm, and a firm would be made up of hooligans, if you'd be using the term in that way.
Nick VinZant 3:14
Kind of sounds like a hooligan is somebody that might just be making trouble. A firm is someone that's there deliberately to cause trouble, and to go after the other team or the other teams fans, is that a fair assessment or not quite?
Professor Geoff Pearson 3:29
Well, I mean, a firm is a group. And it's a group that have the intention of confronting a rival group of say mine, so they're not just going to go after other fans of other of another team. They are looking specifically to confront a rival firm, it's all about reputation. And ultimately, if you're a firm that attacks ordinary fans have another team, your reputation is damaged, it's not enhance.
Nick VinZant 3:59
Where did this kind of all start from? Is there is there a point where you can point to and say, Okay, this is where we have the modern, quote, unquote hooligan slash firm like where did this come from?
Professor Geoff Pearson 4:11
It's really difficult to to answer that question. I mean, ultimately, we there has been violence and disorder associated with live football matches since the birth of the professional game in the 19th century. All the types of misbehavior that are reported, you can find back in newspapers going back to the to the 19th century. So the types of misbehavior have always been there. People have always been fans have always been fighting with each other at that football on occasion. The type of organized football violence that we see between groups, we tend to think of when that developed as being in the 1980s in particular, when we started to move away A from the mass disorder that we saw, particularly in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1980s, in contrast to seeing as being the birth of the firms, when smaller groups looked to engage in more, I guess, precise violence against the specific type of other fans rather than that sort of mass disorder, vandalism, antisocial behavior that would previously seen, but there would have always been groups of fans looking to fight rival groups of fans going back from the birth of the games, it wasn't like there was a start point.
Nick VinZant 5:40
Was there a reason it kind of picked up in the 1980s? Or was this just kind of a cultural thing that just happened?
Professor Geoff Pearson 5:48
Nobody knows. Is the answer when anybody tells you that they do know is lying, because there's a number of different factors in play. One of those factors is that the if we look at the increase in football disorder in Europe, in the in the late 1950s, through to the 1960s, what we're seeing is the baby boomer generation, combined with the fact that people started having weekends. So the weekend, entertainment culture started to appear, we started to see disorder from teenagers on that baby boomer generation that was associated with football, but also with music. So we have a multitude of lockers, for example, fashion, we have a teddy boys. So all this hype of, of misbehavior started really with that generation. What happened in the 1980s is, of course, these people have grown up a bit, they've got a bit more money, they're a little bit less interested in smashing up railway carriages, for example. It's both defeated. But for some of them, they got the excitement of the fighting at football. And actually, they wanted to continue that without the other stuff. So I think one explanation for what happened is that essentially, those people grew up, a lot of them would stop being engaged in that kind of lower level, misbehavior. But those that hung around wanted to retain the violent aspects of it. Another explanation is that the police just got better at preventing that kind of mass violence became more difficult to engage in that kind of mass disorder because stadium started to be redeveloped. Football policing operation started to change, and firms started to be sent to prison for relatively minor incidents of violence. So ultimately, if you wanted to have a fighter football, you had to be a little bit more organized. If your day wasn't going to be moving.
Nick VinZant 7:45
Here in the States, we have organized crime, right? Did the firm's rise to that level of organized crime? Or is it not quite there?
Professor Geoff Pearson 7:55
When we talk about organized football violence, we generally talk about groups that gather together before the match, and I'm talking about in the UK, talking about groups that gather together before the match with the intention that they may get involved in violence, on the way to all the way from the match. And they'll put themselves this group in positions where that violence may occur. So for example, they will they will take over a pub of a rival firms challenge, or they will watch it to march past that rival firms pub. And it may be that they even send a text message to basically say, Oh, we've just arrived walking up your street. So there may be that level of organization. But in the UK, that tends to be where it stops. We don't tend to get fans that will say, Look, we're going to have a fight on this car park at this time on this day. And of course, the fans could the you know, the firms could do that if they wanted. And in other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, they do that quite regularly. So they will say Well hang on a minute with Vladimir Spartak Moscow. We want to have a fight with the firm of Lokomotiv Moscow. We're going to fight on a non match day in this carpark at midnight, because we know the police aren't going to do that. If you really were interested in fighting, that's what you do. And that's what some of the Eastern European firms do. In the UK. It's exceptionally rare that you would see that really, really bad.
Nick VinZant 9:26
Kind of sounds like the difference between starting trouble and looking for trouble.
Professor Geoff Pearson 9:30
Yes, I think that's I think that's a good assessment.
Nick VinZant 9:33
Well, how does like the scene in the United Kingdom compared to other parts of Europe is UK the most organized and violent or like where were the different areas kind of rank on the scale?
Professor Geoff Pearson 9:47
So the UK got the reputation as being the home of football hooliganism in the in the 1970s and 1980s. Prior to that, it had always been assumed that it was is the Latin Americans, Southern Europeans that were the real Firebrand. So actually, UK, fans were incredibly civilized, then sort of in the 70s and 80s, it was the UK that got that reputation. It's not been the case that the UK is a home of hooliganism, or that UK football fans are more violent than other fans for a long time now, certainly not for any point this century. And now much more serious. Violence takes place in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, in southern Europe. So you know, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Italy, increasingly France, or have much more serious problems in the UK. When we
Nick VinZant 10:49
talk about like the level of violence, are we talking about just people throwing hands? Weapons involved? How bad does it get what's normal
Professor Geoff Pearson 10:59
to general it generally, it tends to be fists and feet, things that come to hand rather than going with knives or with battens? You know, there are, if you go to Italy, for example, knives have always been more of a part of that cultural culture than you have elsewhere in Europe. And there were particular forms of essential punishment by knives that were designed to be non fatal, but humiliating, that were utilized in the in the 1980s, and 1990s, particularly by some Italian Ultra groups, but generally it is hands and feet because generally, football fans don't want to kill other football fans, not least because you get sent to prison for it.
Nick VinZant 11:50
I guess, what's the point?
Professor Geoff Pearson 11:52
What's the point in in engagement in in football violence? Well, there's a number of different explanations, there isn't one simple explanation, because ultimately, people even people that engage in football violence, don't engage in football violence all the time, every match. That's the first thing to understand the vast bulk of matches take place perfectly peacefully. So you will have groups that want to engage in violence simply because they enjoy what it delivers to them personally. And that may be a psychological buzz, or it may be social currency may be individual reputation in their locality or in their fan group. Or it may be that they feel that that is the way that they need to represent their locality or represent their particular club. So there are individual reasons why people engage in that. But yeah, the vast bulk of major football disorder. So those sort of major riots that we see from time to time, almost always caused by a breakdown in crowd management. Okay, so the police have done something wrong, we've made a mistake or the crowd security at the stadium have done something wrong. And that has essentially caused a minor incidents of disorder or violence to exacerbate, which draws in fans who didn't have that predisposition to violence that weren't there to fight, but suddenly feel like they are under attack. But yeah, the vast bulk of major football disorder. So those sort of major riots that we see from time to time, and almost always caused by a breakdown in crowd management. Okay, so the police have done something wrong, they've made a mistake or the crowd security at the stadium have done something wrong. And that has essentially caused a minor incidents of disorder or violence to exacerbate, which draws in fans who didn't have that predisposition to violence that weren't there to fight, but suddenly feel like they are under attack, and then it is justified for them to fight back. And that's obviously major incidences of disorder occur. The little football firms themselves that have that predisposition, don't usually have the power to cause riots.
Nick VinZant 14:16
They don't want to put words in your mouth necessarily, but I believe the phrase there was like, okay, so if the police have essentially made a mistake, and that is what kind of turns a minor incident into a major one. What are those mistakes that they usually make?
Professor Geoff Pearson 14:31
Typically, those mistakes involve not engaging with the crowd, while it is peaceful. So if you've got a peaceful crowd, particularly if they are drinking, or the crowd management theory tells us that that is the time that police officers should be talking to the crowd and engaging with the crowd, assessing the mood of the crowd assessing where potential dangers occur, and looking to protect that crowd from attacks from outside the That's an opportunity for the police force and the police officers to basically gain legitimacy among those trials to try and be seen as facilitating their legitimate objectives. And what that means is that if problems occur later in the day, those police officers have come and see, to be able to say to the fans, you stopped doing that? Or can you please move in this direction? Okay, because they've gained that level of trust in the scene as being legitimate. So the first mistake that a lot of forces make is not being proactive and not engaging in what we call dialogue policing. The second problem, which leads to disorder caused by police is when the police use coercive force in an indiscriminate and disproportionate manner, which basically means that people that haven't done anything wrong, suddenly find themselves being pushed around being baton charge, being in a cloud of tear gas, and they've done nothing wrong. And then those fans, some of them may respond, for example, by throwing a bottle of beer that they're drinking back at the police. So those are the two first there's a failure to do something. And secondly, there is doing something indiscriminately and disproportionately, and those two factors of poor policing map into each other. Because if you aren't engaged in the crowd, and you don't have that intelligence and that legitimacy in the crowd, then it's much more likely that you are going to see an overwhelming response that is disproportionate coercive and violence as being legitimate
Nick VinZant 16:39
under reaction and then overreaction. So how did now Now how did you start studying this?
Professor Geoff Pearson 16:47
I was so I was always interested in in football crowds, I always found them fascinating. I love the noise that a crowd made. I love the way that crowds moved. I love the surges that you had on football, terraces, going back from being a kid in the in the 1980s. So I always wanted to do something, which kept me engaged in football crowds, and I wanted to learn more about them. And football hooliganism was seen as being a major social issue around the late 1980s. But at the same time, fans were seen as legitimate targets from the police. And I felt that was unfair. And then we saw what happened at Hillsborough in 1989, when 97 football fans were essentially killed by poor policing. And I felt it was something that I wanted to try and change if I could. So I did I did a PhD in the in the mid 1990s. Looking at how the law and policing and football crowds interacted and what were the best methods for successfully regulating football crowds.
Nick VinZant 17:52
But you observed from the inside, right, the you were in were you in a firm or
Professor Geoff Pearson 17:59
so I the method that I chose to investigate football crowd behavior than football craft regulation was to go covertly undercover inside football crowds, wherever new issues occurred. I wouldn't go as far as to say I infiltrated a firm because ultimately, when I started off with fans of Blackpool football club and then started following England abroad, there wasn't a firm to infiltrate. The disorder that we were seeing was disorder that was largely the result of breakdowns in in public order and safety management. So it's very spontaneous disorder that was occurring. So while I was in those crowds, and fans didn't know I was research, and the police certainly didn't know I was a researcher. I wouldn't I would never go as far as saying I infiltrated organized football firms because because that's what I didn't do.
Nick VinZant 19:03
What was that kind of experience like?
Professor Geoff Pearson 19:07
Well, it was it was it was fascinating. It was exciting. Yes, occasionally, scary, but mostly the disorder and violence that you saw was brief. There were not many people involved. It was fairly easy to stick stay away from the biggest danger, personally was always posed by the police, particularly away from the UK when I went to places like Italy or France with English football teams. We were subjected to very aggressive, violent policing. That was always the the biggest risk and where they felt the most uncomfortable.
Nick VinZant 19:50
Now did you have to kind of do anything to be a part of that crowd or just kind of go along with the crowd?
Professor Geoff Pearson 19:57
Mostly, I could just hang around In the crowd and act as they did, which was almost always in a non violent manner. There were occasions during my early research where they had to commit very minor criminal offenses, which are talked about and published about, for example, running on a football pitch, which is a criminal offence in the UK, or being drunk inside a football stadium. And if I didn't do that, then I would basically be excluded from the group I was, I was researching. But mostly, you know, the, the amount of the amount of actual fights I ended up in, and the amount of times I actually had to throw a punch in self defense was you and I could count on, on the fingers of one hand in 25 years of doing this work.
Nick VinZant 20:50
As a person, you know, who lives in the United States, the thing that I guess I struggle to kind of understand about it, right? Is it? Like, how bad is it? I guess, I mean, are people going to the matches, and they're just like, Oh, you got to watch out, I hope nothing happened. Or is this really kind of an isolated thing that happens amongst small certain groups,
Professor Geoff Pearson 21:13
it's the latter is pretty much something you need to look for. Certainly domestically, if you go to your average Premier League game in England, you're merely really unlucky if you see a violence incidents. And likewise, people that do want to get involved in fights, actually, it's quite difficult to go and look for that violence and define violence and and these spend a lot of their time they the firm's that are active, just being marched around by the football police in in England, who genuinely have good control of those small groups that are looking to engage in environments. So incidents do occur. But, you know, quite unlucky if you if you find yourself involved, and generally you know, where to avoid, and what behaviors to avoid doing. If you want to avoid
Nick VinZant 22:14
I'm a big numbers person and say, on a scale of one to 10, if one is the most peaceful community of happy fans that you could imagine, and 10 is the 1980s. Like, where do you think we are currently on that scale?
Professor Geoff Pearson 22:29
Well, maybe three.
Nick VinZant 22:32
That's like, that's not going to happen to you. But you knew, you know that you have to be aware that it is there.
Professor Geoff Pearson 22:38
Yeah. And I think they put it in is to put it in its context. I think pre lockdown we were to. So the has been on a post lockdown increase.
Nick VinZant 22:48
Do you think that does that mean that? Is that a trend where we're going to be going back up? Or is that kind of just like, alright, the pandemic is lifting for the most part, at least socially, in terms of social gathering? And this is a temporary thing, or do you think, okay, we're ramping back up here.
Professor Geoff Pearson 23:07
So I think it's a if we keep doing what we've been doing, particularly talking from the UK here, if we keep doing what we're doing in terms of good crowd management, I think it's just a blip. I think the self regulation and self policing longfeng groups will re establish itself. And I think the good football policing operations will also establish themselves and things will can't go. The risk is that it's seen by the authorities as being a trend. And it's seen that the previous things we were doing weren't working. And that therefore we need to up the stakes in terms of, for example, the number of police officers, the aggression of those police officers. And if we do that, then the risk is that you're going to make the situation worse. So it has the potential to get worse, I don't think we will ever go back to where we were in the 1970s or 1980s. Because I think things are just so much better now in terms of stadium infrastructure, legal infrastructure and expertise of police officers. But there is a risk that some police forces will essentially panic. And they'll make things worse, good football policing operations. I think we'll get this under control. And actually, there's all at the moment, there's evidence that things are already starting to come under control.
Nick VinZant 24:33
Are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions? Are Yes, when we look at football firms, who's kind of has the most dangerous reputation now, who was always the one that who's kind of like the, the most of all time, I guess?
Professor Geoff Pearson 24:51
Um, well, I mean, look you if Millwall play in a high risk match, they will always be In a group of people that I fight, every time there were there were an a way group that if confronted, you know, some of them will always fight back. And that has always been the case. It's established in the, in the culture there, the very cohesive unit. But I wouldn't want people to think that no, we're a team that went and attack people, because they don't, but you know, Millwall always have that reputation. Then you have fan groups that always take large numbers of fans that make themselves heard, and pose very serious crowd management challenges, should we say, and then that you would include Leeds United, and Manchester United, always. And then you've got groups in between, you know, I mean, Birmingham have always had a bit of a reputation. Aston Villa pose cloud management problems, when they when the when the attend. So there's, there's there's quite, there's quite a lot of all of the Premier League clubs, probably with the exception of Liverpool have a affirm of some sort. But they tend to be quite small, and tend to cause problems frequently.
Nick VinZant 26:27
If there was one that you would say, like, of all time, like, oh,
they were they were a problem.
Professor Geoff Pearson 26:34
I mean, in the in the 1970s, you would always say it was Manchester United, that were that were the were the worst team in terms of crowds disorder in the 1980s. You might say, well, perhaps it was Chelsea or West Ham. And more recently, you might say it's, it's some of those more smaller firms like, like Milwaukee that caused more problems. So there hasn't been a single one that has always been up there at the top.
Nick VinZant 27:05
Is it usually worse when you're talking about violence when a UK team is playing the UK team, or when Country X is playing country? Why?
Professor Geoff Pearson 27:16
As it as a general rule, it's always worth worth domestically. Because these are because when problems occur domestically, those two teams may be playing each other for months down the line, or that time next season. So you have that historical rivalry that develops. So if, for example, you have a situation where the firm gets it wrong, and attacks a group of innocent supporters of a rival team, then you've got to worry about what retribution there will be for that later on. Whereas, of course, when teams from different countries play each other, they may not play each other again for another 30 years. So as a general rule, it tends to be domestic live will be is that cause a lot of copies?
Nick VinZant 28:01
Is there a sense of reputation amongst the firm's themselves?
Professor Geoff Pearson 28:07
Yeah, I mean, reputation is really important. And it's not just reputation between the firm's its reputation between the team supporters, because even if you don't want if you if you travel regularly away from home, particularly if you're a young male, actually, a lot of the spotters that we speak to have a pride in their firm being active and having a good reputation, even if they are completely non violent individuals themselves. So the reputation matters beyond just the individual firms. But ultimately, particularly in the UK, you uno, the actual levels of interpersonal violence and organized violence are very low. And if you're the firm that's going up against another firm, and you've taken an absolute battering, it's equally likely that actually, you're not going to show up every weekend, because you don't want another kick. It's a bit different when we moved to sort of Eastern Europe and sort of these stones are more organized, more serious, more cohesive, and generally bigger, then you might get that, you know, the retribution aspects. But the easy answer to that question is reputation is very important and maintaining your reputation, if you can, is important, but if you can't realistically maintain your reputation, fans generally are members of them don't go in for an absolute kicking
Nick VinZant 29:26
if they can help. So people like fans do take a certain pride in it even if they're not participate. Yeah,
Professor Geoff Pearson 29:33
absolutely. And, and football fans will chant songs about football violence, even though they've never been involved in it themselves.
Nick VinZant 29:42
What's the song about football violence?
Professor Geoff Pearson 29:45
So for example, Manchester United fans will sing a song which goes we fought in France we fought in Spain, we fought in the Sun we fought in the main we took the cup and Chelsea too but what we like most is kicking a blow by blew them in Manchester City for these fans singing it have never kicked a Manchester City fan in the head. And that's what the city
Nick VinZant 30:07
everybody just wants to be part of something at the end of the day, right? You just want to you just want to say you were there to do any of the firms engage in organized crime outside of football.
Professor Geoff Pearson 30:21
I think it's more the case that people that are involved in organized crime away from football may also be involved in the essentially if you're if you're a juggler with absolutely loads of money to spare, then traveling around around the world, watching your team is something you might want to spend your match on. If you're particularly violent individual, you know, the chances are you can get involved in a scrapper game at some point. So, so there are overlaps between organized crime, and the firm's. And if we go to again, Southern and Eastern Europe and South America, you tend to see a lot of overlaps between things like drug dealing, and those and those firms and also corruption and local authorities and local governments. So there are those overlaps. But it's not the case that it's like the firm's read out into other types of misbehavior. It was more the other way around that involvement in football violence is something that that overlaps with can be an outcome of the other form of criminality and corruption.
Nick VinZant 31:34
That makes sense, right? I guess if like I was involved in narcotics or robbery or burglary, being a part of a firm would be a pretty easy hobby.
Professor Geoff Pearson 31:43
And it's an it's an It's social, good social currency as well, if you have a reputation of being a hard football hooligan. Okay, that helps you out. In, you know, if you're, if you're selling, you're buying drugs off somebody, it means that they're much less likely to cross you. If you need to get into a certain nightclub. And you've got a reputation as fighting football, again, it's much more likely to be helpful. We don't We shouldn't look at this as being mindless violence, it is sometimes very, very valuable for those people that need to use physical force in the course of criminal activities.
Nick VinZant 32:18
Now, did you get a reputation when you were infiltrating?
Professor Geoff Pearson 32:23
No, very, very, very brief and completely undeserved one, but you know what I was, I was, I was 21 when I started this and I couldn't fight my way out of the paper sack.
Nick VinZant 32:36
Best Movie about this culture.
Professor Geoff Pearson 32:40
That's an easy, that's a very easy question. The best movie about football violence is ID with Reese Dinsdale, because the because that's the only movie that gets the camaraderie and the humor about football violence, that actually the fighting that the firm's do is only a very small part of what they're about. It's about the camaraderie it's about the expression of identity. It's about representing your locality. And it's about humor funny things happening. An ID is the only film that nails that
Nick VinZant 33:21
which one makes your eye twitch like absolutely Oh god,
Professor Geoff Pearson 33:24
I can't I can't watch most I can't I mean green streets. I mean yeah, I mean, the idea that what's his face the hobbit from the Lord of the Rings would be involved in that kind of activity Elijah Woods it is just laughable
Nick VinZant 33:43
at what I guess what about it? What makes it so because he's not a big physically imposing person? Or what what makes it kind of like no
Professor Geoff Pearson 33:52
Yeah, I mean, the fact that there's nothing to suggest he's is capable of fighting and there's there's nothing to suggest that he's actually connected with what the firm's are doing and as I say, That's why ideas such as I mentioned a better Phil it explains ID why people might get involved in the fight, which you know, those films like retreat just just never did. It was just such an abstract concept. Whereas actually, when you go to the football even if you don't want to fight yourself, you can see why people would want to and why would people get involved in it?
Nick VinZant 34:32
What do you think of like the World Cup? Is the World Cup usually a place for this or like No, no really?
Professor Geoff Pearson 34:38
Dark pay the firm's never travel as firms to will welcome so the Italian Ultras don't go the the hooligans in Belgium and Holland don't go. The some of the English lads will go but they won't go to fight. They won't go either to fight with each other or to fight the police or the local groups. Occasionally, there has been the sort of the European football championships, for example, in Marseille in 2016. But generally the World Cups, you don't tend to get that violence disorder occurs, it tends to be because the police have messed up, usually involving England farms. But it's not an occasion where the firm's look to fight. The won't be any organized violence in Qatar.