English hooligans and Italian ultras: Sport, culture and national policy narratives

How has football hooliganism in England, largely, been successfully managed or displaced over the past 30 years, while violence and disorder caused by sections of the ultras movement in Italy continues to dog the domestic Italian game? This paper tries to map out the relevant developments off, as well as on, the sporting landscapes in each of these countries. Many European states have looked, simply, to legislative changes and to reforms in policing and stewarding in England, without understanding how these have been combined with a wider cultural transformation of the fan experience at football matches in a new generation of highly priced, modernized and highly regulated stadia. The Hillsborough Stadium disaster in England in 1989 - not caused by hooliganism but predicated upon expectations it might occur – provided for something of a sea change in public attitudes towards the game and football fans. It also changed the prevailing rhetoric inside English stadia from a struggle over who controls stadium space to one focused on pacification and fan safety. A forced stadium modernization programme in England in the 1990s marginalized hooligan cultures from the global sporting product the EPL has since become. By contrast, in Italy less of this modernization, or change in attitudes or approach, has occurred in quite the same way. Violent ultras in Italy are more politicized and wield more power in the Italian game than their equivalents do in England. Moreover, no major trauma has occurred in Italy to aid radically re-positioning the domestic game.