The violence inherent in mob football was repressed when the world accepted Association football as its football game of choice. If Association football were a rougher game, I’m not sure this would be as big an issue.

I did see the Spangly Princess blog post, though I had missed the debate in the comments section. I’ve added my own long-winded comment asking whether the self-presentation of the ultra subculture and its embrace of extreme positions don’t qualify as implicit endorsements of violence. I didn’t even get to the question of the ultras and the civilizing process, but will continue to think about it for long-winded comments in the future.

Did you see Spangles’ blog entry in which she quotes an ultra’s description of the fan experience? It aroused an unusually heated debate.

@de vertalerin – Thanks for bringing my attention to Norbert Elias. I hadn’t read his work, but will do so now with interest. Based on a cursory Google search, my impression is that his (serious, scholarly) interest is in the function of sports within the larger order of society, whereas my (amateur, half-formed) interest is in the fan’s experience of sports and the way a visceral attraction to conflict can be transformed into something aesthetic. But I agree with what you’ve written here, and was really interested to read about your son. It’s striking how often children seem to have a perfect intuitive sense of the stakes of being a fan–they throw themselves into the games with serious passion, but don’t let game reality distort their everyday behavior.

This is the Norbert Elias theory of sport as part of the civilising process, isn’t it? Elias suggests that sport does function exactly as you suggest in providing a forum for the contained and ritualised expression of what you and he call ‘primitive’ forces (though that’s a word I prefer to avoid) but that it doesn’t and can’t do that in isolation. When other things are going on, socially and politically, sport can be turned around to provide a focus around which to act out grievances, grievances which may not be fully grasped and certainly can’t be articulated by the people experiencing them.

If Elias and his successors are broadly right, this problem can’t be resolved with repressive measures, only suppressed. It is political.

Because football, in particular, soaks up the need for adrenalin and excitement in an explicitly tribal setting (offering the deep pleasures of solidarity and belonging in a fractured society), the risk when things go wrong is great; it’s a bit like nuclear power, a fantastic solution with awful disaster potential.

Let’s not forget that mostly, it works. My eleven-year-old acts very like Feyanoord Kid at an Arsenal match and is a mild, principled lad the rest of the time. Our lives – his and mine – would be less rich without our tribal identity. And he treasures the CSKA scarf he got through a swap after a Champions League match last year, which suggests that the fluffy bunny, kids-and-universal-fellowship model is also operating, simultaneously, in a very complex figuration.

Thanks again for your excellent work, I shall be visiting regularly in future.

The difference with football, I suppose, it’s that there’s now a global problem of violence associated with it in most places, unfortunately.

A concern I have as a result is that ultras everywhere are now being tarred with the same hooligan brush football fans in England had to put up with in the 80s — which led to tragedy. Most ultras are not, in fact, violent.