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Originally posted by noikeee I don't have an hard time believing english fans are provoked more often than others due to their reputation. But some verbal provocation isn't enough justification for losing the temper and starting a fight. Fuck 'honour', a bunch of basic insults from some idiots doesn't justify further pushing your fans reputation into the mud. The impression I get is that english people tend to be fairly more aggressive than people over here. Starts with kids who beat up each other a lot, follows with alcohol parties resulting in regular fights (almost unseen over here, despite people consuming LOTS of alcohol), and ends with football hooliganism. Of course I recognise english hooliganism improved a lot since the tragedy of Heysel, and lately we've seen violent episodes around football in the whole Europe, which certainly indicates this phenomenon isn't exclusive to England. But IMO it's in part a consequence of your culture/mentality. English fans aren't to blame in every single episode they've been to, and the media has exploited the whole thing a bit too far, but I still think they're more prone to trouble than other supporters.

Very good post.

I agree English people in general are quite aggressive lot, but I think on the continent we're portrayed like a group of barbarians too much which you can blame the media for. In the 80's, 90's we were the worst behaved set of fans and it's quite embrassing in some ways.

Yet our police are the best in the world for Hooliganism. All people with convictions for it have to check into to police stations the day of world cup games. At all airports and seaports football intelligence officers are placed to spot troublemakers. We do are best to prevent violence at games.

I was out in Florence (Firenze) in Italy during the world cup when we lost in the quarter finals to you guys. what police there was literally gathered around us. Yes there was a bit of banter between us and the Portuguese a couple of chants of the good old 'Who are yer' 'Who are yer' during the penalties when Gerrard put his in and levelled it we ran over to the Portuguese fans cheering in their faces, but after that game with amount of controversy involved we went up to your fans shook their hands and spoke about the game.

Heysel was very sad. My team made it into Europe the season afterwards but of course English teams were banned, so no European campaign for us

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