INTRODUCTION According to the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), football is currently the world’s most popular sport, with an estimated 2.65 billion people practicing the sport worldwide in over 200 countries . Much of its popular success has been attributed to its importance as a sociocultural, political, and economic phenomenon, but also due to its nature as a communicational practice filled with symbolism. Football has become a true social, symbolical, and communicational space which brings to the masses not only a means of distraction and recreation, but also a point of integration in which the sentiments of communal belonging and identity are reaffirmed. Moreover, the sport is a socializing vehicle through which the social …show more content…
Through football, young people fulfill their needs of expressing their conflicts as well as wishes, which are some of the key axes of juvenile identity. This is especially true for the more popular sectors of society, as social interaction reaffirms the feeling of belonging and identity in a community. Scholars of Liverpool Hope University proposed in their 2008 study that “involvement in football violence can be explained in relation to a number of factors, relating to interaction, identity, legitimacy, and power. Football violence is also thought to reflect expressions of strong emotional ties to a football team, which may help to reinforce a supporter’s sense of identity” . Moreover, some have characterized hooligans as another sort of urban tribe, given the distinct cultural traits that they show . The present paper seeks to answer the question if hooliganism is the same all over the world, mainly regarding the underlying characteristics of these groups, their internal dynamics, and organization. For that matter, an analysis of this phenomenon will be carried out in some of the regions and countries where football is more popular, in order to draw inferences regarding the similarities and differences between