ABSTRACT
No one would deny that world football (or soccer, as it is sometimes known) has undergone a fundamental structural transformation. At the elite level, football's finances have grown exponentially, while there have been major changes in the cultural organization of the game as experienced by players, spectators, and media commentators. The United Kingdom (particularly England) has perhaps witnessed the most dramatic change in football's social and economic standing, because in the mid-1980s the English game was synonymous in the global public imagination with spectator violence and an entrenched infra-structural decline.
