football hooligan

plural football hooligans

1. UKA violent football (soccer) fan who routinely fights with supporters of opposing teams and/or with police, often the member of a firm.

   I wasn't a football hooligan but I knew a lot of people and I knew a lot of football hooligans, and I got on with a lot of them.

   2014, Luke Bainbridge, The True Story of Acid House: Britain’s Last Youth Culture Revolution, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   They speak of the respect among their peers that they hope their hooligan involvements will bring, and of "battle excitement," "the adrenaline racing," and "aggro" (short for aggression) almost erotically arousing. Indeed, Jay Allan, a leading member of the Aberdeen Casuals, a Scottish football hooligan “firm” in the 1980s, wrote of fighting at football as even more pleasurable than sex (1989).

   2010, Earl Smith, Sociology of Sport and Social Theory, →ISBN, page 22

   All of these factors have probably had their effect, though directly addressing the deeper, social causes of football hooligan behaviour has not been a major focus in the shaping of the current version of the sport in England.

   2013, Mark Perryman, Hooligan Wars: Causes and Effects of Football Violence, →ISBN