page_title: Football hooliganism in the United Kingdom
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Football hooliganism in the United Kingdom / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: English: The West Yorkshire Police control statiom, showing CCTV at the Elland Road football ground in Leeds.jpg
context_page_description: Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the English Disease. However, since the 1980s and well into the 1990s the UK government has led a widescale crackdown on football related violence. While football hooliganism has been a growing concern in some other European countries in recent years, British football fans now tend to have a better reputation abroad. Although reports of British football hooliganism still surface, the instances now tend to occur at pre-arranged locations rather than at the matches themselves.
context_section_description: By 1990, the hooliganism problem in English football had reduced to the extent that UEFA lifted its ban on English clubs in European competitions.
  In 1994, a few days before a Sunderland A.F.C. vs Nottingham Forest game, police snatched a pile of weapons, drugs worth thousands of pounds from Seaburn Casuals (firm from Sunderland]] who were preparing for a showdown with Nottingham hooligans. 
  A riot on 15 February 1995, during an aborted England–Ireland friendly at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, resulting in 20 injuries and 40 arrests. When an English equaliser was disallowed, English fans in the upper tier threw items into the lower tier, ripped up seats and benches, and fought Garda riot police.
  After England's defeat to Germany in the Euro 96 semi-finals, a large-scale riot took place in Trafalgar Square, with a number of injuries, and a Russian youth was stabbed in Brighton after his attackers mistook him for a German. However, by 1997, it was said by Reuters that the English game had "virtually rid itself of the hooligan scourge". 
  Before the 1998 FIFA World Cup, 26 hooligans from Seaburn Casuals (a Sunderland A.F.C. firm) were arrested in a police raid after a military-issue smoke bomb was let out at a local pub after a fight with bouncers. By the end of the operation, over 60 were facing charges. Some of the Seaburn Casuals hooligans picked up in the raid were also involved with neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18. The operation failed when judge ruled CCTV footage from the pub inadmissible.
  France 98 was marred by violence as English fans clashed with the North African locals of Marseille, leading to up to 100 fans being arrested.
  At the end of the 1999-2000 season, Sunderland topped the hooliganism table in the Premier League, with 223 fans arrested that season. By the end of the 2002-03 season, Sunderland topped the football arrests table with 154.
  According to Colin Blaney in Hotshot: The Story of a Little Red Devil, many of Manchester United's football hooligans turned to serious crime during this period. He states that roughly half of the team's hooligans became involved in selling class A drugs, partly because of the wave of drugs that came with early 1990s rave culture, a scene that football hooligans were at the centre of.
caption: This picture shows the West Yorkshire Police control station's camera system at Elland Road, which they use to spot hooligans and rioters.
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