Kick it out

In the 1970s and 1980s, football fandom sadly became inextricably associated with hooliganism, racism and far-right politics. The problems may have subsided in the 1990s with the advent of the Premier League and the more sanitised version of the beautiful game that it heralded, but today it seems evident that they were never completely eradicated.

As Rob Langham explores in a recent post for The Two Unfortunates, the rise in right-wing populism and anti-immigrant sentiment in wider society has served to reawaken old attitudes on the terraces and in pubs pre- and post-match, embodied in the form of the Democratic Football Lads Alliance.

The DFLA might be floundering somewhat, a victim of its own tribal divisions, but nevertheless work to resist a return to "the bad old days" is urgently needed.