From English to Polish Disease. Conceptualising hooligans’ setup fights and their diffusion across Europe

This article focuses on the phenomenon of hooligans’ setup fights (abbr. as ‘the setups’), a modern form of pre-arranged (planned) hooligan confrontations. The setups require arrangements including deciding on a secluded place and time, as well as a set of rules predefined by the participants, including their number, age and mutual consent not to use any weapons. Despite the media spotlight and massive body of knowledge on football hooliganism and its prominence, the issue of the setups has failed to attract greater analytical attention. This empirically informed conceptual study fills that void by (a) introducing the term ‘hooligans’ setup fights’ to conceptualize the self-ruled, pre-arranged model of fights typical of modern hooliganism; (b) assessing the current geographical range of the setups in Europe; and (c) discussing the social and cultural conditions that contribute to their growing popularity as the most current way of hooligans’ competitive violence across Europe.