The English Disease is a brand new documentary podcast written and hosted by football writer Sam Diss which follows the football hooliganism movement through British culture.
Sixty years ago, scholars viewed football hooligans as Marxist freedom fighters. Forty years ago, they were the devils of the British people. Twenty years ago, they were said to be gone, and now, in 2024, we realise they're not going anywhere.
The media portrays football hooligans as the most deviant and dangerous elements of British society, but who are hooligans and why do some fans behave the way they do? If we dig a little deeper, beyond the stereotypes and tabloid headlines, what do we find?
Football hooliganism is a dirty word in England, evoking football's dark days in the 80s, but its legacy lives on in fashion and music, football and politics, policing and policy, and the people involved in hooliganism have never gone away.
With stories of violence flooding social media timelines across the UK during Euro 2024, and the far-right movement now more closely aligned with “youth” and “hooligans” than ever before, this new series goes head-on to the heart of this darkness.
Throughout the series Sam interviews a range of contributors, including former hooligans, some of whom say those were “the best days of their lives”.
Some have openly expressed remorse, such as the 21-year-old man charged with manslaughter in connection with a football-related attack who is writing a letter from prison.
Sam also infiltrates some of the biggest online football fan groups, including the “Football Lads United” page and WhatsApp group.
Here are conversations with scholars, journalists and experts who have dedicated their lives to understanding this complex yet primal instinct to fight for their team.
These include Geoff Pearson, law professor and author of Football Hooliganism, who has been researching the impact of laws and policing strategies on football-related violence since the mid-1990s, and the legendary Bill Buford, journalist and author of the influential Among the Thugs, the definitive record of football hooliganism in the 1980s.
Sam will also speak to female fans who feel excluded from attending the match, including women who were sexually harassed at the Euro 2020 final.
Sam Diss says: “It's easy to ignore hooliganism – it's too ugly, too stupid, too primitive to face. But this avoidance felt like society was running away from something deeper, focusing only on the effects and not the causes.”
“Growing up in gentrifying East London, where the past disappears with every new building, I couldn't shake the feeling that the old was always fading… But what does that actually mean? Football violence reveals buried truths in England, echoes of something unresolved.”
” Driven by excitement, boredom, class, racism, friendship, masculinity and identity, English Disease depicts how the past lingers, the masks that continue to eat away at our faces. Ultimately, this is a story about stories: the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell others and the stories that are told about us.”
Stak will make the first two episodes of “The English Disease” available on all podcast platforms from Tuesday, October 1st.
