The hooligan phenomenon has a much deeper social significance than it seems. In a society where group identity is completely blurred in favor of brutal individualism, the spaces to generate that necessary sense of belonging are reduced, in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, to disoriented gangs or groups of hooligans that behind the shield of a football club they focus and orient that lost identity and where there is an ideal for which to initially compete and fight, violence through, in the end.
They are not mindless, not at least in all cases. Violence is a behavior typical of all living beings to defend their own. The problem is how these hooligans groups completely unleash this tendency for violence as a seal to beat others.
In any other social sphere, violence is institutionalized, channeled, moderated, transformed. in radical groups, the opposite occurs, it is valued and promoted as a perfect way to show frustration and social disenchantment.
Philipp Winkler, a fan of Hannover 96, dedicates the pages of this book to explain why. the reasons for looking in football and in its radicals for an identity space that is adjusted to their particular situation. Abandoned by his mother and neglected by his father. The perfect mix so that all desire to belong to something is always based on hatred and violence.
It is not about excusing anyone. Everyone has to assume their behavior. It is just an approach to the why of a specific hooligan, a guy who, after 30, continues to love his group to hate the rest of the world, a kind of maddening mirror, a problem of fit of the citizen in society. A problem that is difficult to solve without measures at source.
Social inequalities (especially in terms of opportunities) is what it has, they favor the appearance of these antisocial spaces.
You can buy the book Hooligan, Philipp Winkler's written testimony, here: