Football in its Place

In the late 1980s football was in a state of crisis. Falling attendances and a genuine unease among potential spectators about going to live football matches suggested that, without radical changes, the game would soon become a minority spectator sport. Originally published in 1989, reissued now with a new preface, Football in its Place presented a new approach to the problem that concentrates on the spectators’ experience of football and on the places where it is played.

This approach recognizes four themes, which relate directly to the spectators’ experience: spectator comfort; the need for effective crowd control; the problems of coping in emergencies; and variations in club cultures. A special chapter on football-related violence shows how this needs to be understood in relation to all of these themes and not treated as a problem in isolation. This was said to be the only way to reverse the spiral that had given rise to hooliganism.

Finally, the authors discuss the options for the future on football. They emphasize that football is a recreational activity whose management should be treated as part of the leisure industry. All aspects of the game, its traditions, club variations and heritage, needed to be harnessed if football was again to be Britain’s most popular spectator sport. Today we can see the impact that the points made in this book have contributed to how we continue to watch and enjoy football now.