Football and English Culture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLph6ePNkGQ

Football has created an individual culture across the globe and is capable of bringing millions of people together in unison. It has more specifically though, invented a way of life which is breathed across the country by more than half the population. The English are simply mad about the game. It is lived, breathed and eaten in the country. Across the whole of the UK you will see football everywhere, there is no getting away from it even if you wanted to. Team shirts are worn, flags are hung from windows, tattoos are flashed about and the language of football is spoken frequently and fluently.

Men and women, boys and girls and even sometimes pets are glued to all levels of the game. Parents will go to watch their children play at grass roots level, fans will flock to the pub or their living rooms to watch the media’s coverage and the lucky ones will drive often stressful, sometimes long drives to queue for hours to get into the stadium and watch it live. The next morning the newspapers will be covered in gossip and results, the streets filled with people talking about the action and kids over the park trying to re-enact their favourite player’s skills and or goal/s.

Behind that there is a deeper level to the love felt for the game in the country. Football is renowned for the togetherness it brings to its supporters. Packed stadiums will have thousands of people who have never met, singing the same songs, shouting the same things and cheering together for 90 minutes. Football creates friendships as well as providing entertainment.

England has seperated itself from the rest of the world when it comes to football culture. Unfortunately however the darker side of English culture also mixes with the culture within the beautiful game. Since the turn of the 20th century, football hooliganism has been a black spot on the gold surace of the game loved accross the world. England was the main destination of the violence connected to football, as the love and passion for the game turned to an excuse to fight with opposing fans over results and decisions, sometimes for no reason at all.

Also known as the English Disease, football hooliganism is unruly and destructive behaviour—such as brawls, vandalism and intimidation by association football club fans. Fights between supporters of rival teams may take place before or after football matches at pre-arranged locations away from stadiums, in order to avoid arrests by the police, or they can erupt spontaneously at the stadium or in the surrounding streets, ruining the beauty and elegance of the game and taking the spotlight away from the match itself.  Football hooliganism can range from shouts and small-scale fistfights and disturbances to huge riots where gangs of ‘supporters’ attack each other, sometimes with deadly weapons such as sports bats, bottles, rocks, and knives. In some cases, stadium brawls have caused fans to flee in panic; some being injured when fences or walls collapsed. In the most extreme cases, hooligans, police, and bystanders have been killed, and riot police have intervened with tear gas, armoured vehicles and water cannons. Although hooliganism has died down, after having films made about its exploits and measures being taken by the police and the governing bodies in the UK, it is still existent. Remeniscent of its historically competitive and sometimes violent behaviour, England supporters do occasionally put a bad name to the home of world football.