This was England

Growing up the one thing my parents tried their hardest to curb from my habits was an insatiable appetite for television. Hey, most of us are kids from the 70s or 80s and maybe 90s. TV is our friend. It keeps us warm, looks after us and feeds us with knowledge. Or garbage. Depends on what channel you watch. As a kid I'd watch anything out there but now that I'm all grown up (look at me mom!) and have priorities and responsibilities (yuk) I have to be more selective. So obviously football is up there, home reno shows and to be honest I LOVE food TV. My love for watching food but being unable to cook it myself (hmmm kinda like watching football but can't kick a ball for shit) led me to a great book called Heat. Heat is written by Bill Buford and is about working in Mario Batali's kitchen in NYC. A fantastic book about cooking in one of the best restaurants in America and Buford's journey to gain REAL Italian cooking skills. Once I finished this book, about a year ago, my roommate posed the question to me, "Have you read his book on hooliganism?" ... WTF? "Uh, no, this is the same guy? ... Football hooliganism?" Well it sure was. Now that I'm rotating between a football book every other read, it was time to cover the topic of English hooliganism from what is regarded as one of the best.

I've always been interested in reading about English hooliganism from the 80s since I read How Soccer Explains the World with Foer interviewing an original Chelsea Headhunter. It's not about glorifying violence or "watching the trainwreck", I like to know anything historical, and terraces and hooliganism was a major part of the game in England during this decade. This book was recommended to me and the topic I found intreaguing so it seemed like a good start.



For someone from North America, Canada specifically, your journey reading this book almost mirrors Buford's nearly ten years in England following the game and it's fans. I have no frame of reference for sports violence, at least not on this scale. I really can't think of any sport over here that has been the catalyst for such absurd violence before, during or after the game. Buford, like myself, starts out a curious spectator eager to get in and meet a real hooligan, and find out what this is all about. He gets in with Man United supporters in the early 1980s, talking to a few, then following them to Turin for a Cup Winners Cup match against Juventus. This is his, and the reader's first taste of what this is really all about - not just getting wasted, falling down drunk and a few ugly scuffles - but finally witnessing the meaning of finally "it's going to go off".

One of my favorite passages/chapters in the book is brilliant a conversation he has with a superintendent of the police in Sunderland about violence at sporting matches, specifically in North America, which possibly puts in perspective why things were the way they were:

"Am I mistaken, Mr Buford," he asked, 'or is it the case, that there is seating for everyone at every American football match?" He had heard this was so.

Buford confirms and then confirms that although there are 60 minutes of play, games last for sometimes up to 3hrs.

"And am I mistaken, Mr Buford,' he continued, 'or is it the case that, even though the matches might last two or even three hours there is no crowd trouble?'

Buford assures him it is a very rare thing. He shakes his head, uncomprehending.

For over five years, almost ten, Buford attends numerous games in England and abroad, domestic games and international, chronicling the idea of "the crowd" and it's role in violence in football. He sees racism - from regular folks to all out 'nationalists' and violence from total trash to guys pocketing rolls of fifties. I was going to go really into this book and the details but have found that the trip over 300 pages is similar to Buford's through 8+ years - by the end you so are sick of it and totally over how f@%*ing stupid crowd violence and hooliganism is. You really just sit back and think, holy shit what a bunch of losers, and the truth is you become what you surround yourself with.

Buford ends his saga with one last hurrah at the 1990 World Cup in Italy to see if "it goes off" one last time. It does but it seems like although already knowing it, he needs to be in it one last time to reach his epiphany. A fellow journalist approaches him after a massive march with the police and proclaims how stupid the whole thing was - "I have never seen something so stupid in all my life." Buford looks at him and states that he liked him very much - "No, nor have I".

Among the Thugs is worth going through the journey, for nothing more than seeing a side of the game that is so pointless and worthless that better to get it out and over with in a book then wanting to experience it in real life. The real kicker is when Buford receives a message from one of the serious hooligans from Man U who has "retired" and is living Barbados:

Sunbathing, good food and great sex is so much better than being a thug.