ABSTRACT
Although spectator problems had occurred at other major football championships, the 1988 European Football Championships were probably the first for which disorders between rival fan groups were actually predicted beforehand. Since 1985, English club sides and their supporters have, of course, been banned from European competition. However, the English national side continues to play abroad. Matches involving England in Sweden in 1986 and in Spain and West Germany (Dusseldorf) in 1987, all produced incidents of spectator disorder. In each case, right-wing groups were implicated in the disturbances and English fans were reported as victims of foreign hooliganism and not only as assailants (Williams et al, 1989). At the same time, throughout 1986 and 1987 problems of hooliganism were apparently escalating in a number of continental countries, notably in West Germany and Italy, but particularly in the Netherlands. Once again, right-wing organizations were regularly cited for their alleged involvement in promoting hooligan disturbances. There was also some evidence that the English remained the role models for hooligans abroad and that cross-national contacts were growing between hooligan ringleaders from different European nations (Van Limbergen and Walgrave, 1988; Williams et at, 1989). Newspaper reports in England just prior to the 1988 Championships described English hooligan ‘generals’ holding ‘summit’ meetings with their Dutch equivalents on trains en route to West Germany (‘Yobs Plot War’, Daily Star, 11 June 1988). Moreover, continental fans-as well as the English-now showed signs for the first time of exporting hooligan behaviour (Williams et al, 1989). In this context, the visit of Holland to Wembley in March 1988 was widely billed in the English press as a ‘showdown’ between Europe’s most notorious football hooligans. According to Van Limbergen and
Walgrave (1988), Net Nieuwsblad on 23 March 1988 described the meeting as promising ‘Football War at Wembley’. In the event, few Dutch fans travelled to London for the match and the English fought only among themselves. Van der Brug and Meijs (1988) commented on the ‘poor’ Dutch turn-out by suggesting that, ‘perhaps they [Dutch hooligans] were somewhat intimidated by the thought of meeting the English on their own ground’.
