Football has spent too long treating abuse as part of the matchday weather. It blows in, it makes a mess, everyone complains for a while, and then by Monday morning the game carries on. The stadiums reopen. The pubs refill. The trains run again. The online forums reset for the next outrage. The excuse, spoken or unspoken, is always the same: it was only football.
That excuse has expired.
The disorder around recent football celebrations and fixtures should force the game to ask a deeper question. Not merely why do some fans behave so badly, but why has football tolerated behaviour that would be unacceptable almost anywhere else in British life?
Paris Saint-Germain’s Champions League final victory over Arsenal in Budapest was supposed to be a celebration of elite sport. PSG retained the trophy after a tense 1-1 draw and penalty shootout. Yet beyond the football, the images that followed in Paris and London told another story. In France, violent disorder after PSG’s triumph led to 780 arrests, with reports of fires, vandalism, attacks on police and injuries to officers. In London, Arsenal’s victory parade brought joy to huge numbers of supporters, but was followed by reports of stabbings, arrests, damaged police vehicles and officers injured after the event.
The vast majority of football fans are not violent. They are families, workers, students, pensioners, children, lifelong supporters and new followers. They sing, travel, spend, suffer and celebrate. They are the heartbeat of the game. But the problem is that a destructive minority has been allowed to distort the experience for everyone else.
They do not simply ruin football for rival supporters. They ruin it for commuters, bar staff, stewards, police officers, referees, players, managers, families, children and people walking through their own cities.
And the damage is no longer limited to matchday.
A manager picks a team some supporters dislike, and the abuse begins. A player misses a chance, and the abuse begins. A referee gives a decision, and the abuse begins. A female presenter expresses an opinion, and the abuse begins. A goalkeeper makes an error, and suddenly his family can be dragged into the storm.
Some managers may not be on social media, but their children are. Their partners are. Their relatives are. There are wives and family members of football professionals who cannot use online platforms normally because the game has normalised a level of intrusion, venom and intimidation that no worker’s family should be expected to absorb.
This is the point football must now confront: abuse does not stay in the stadium. It follows people home.
The old excuse has gone
For decades, football disorder has been filed away as a special category of public nuisance. It has been treated as if it belongs to a strange British ritual: Saturday comes, beer flows, tempers rise, police manage it, Sunday papers tut, and everyone moves on.
But ordinary people are no longer prepared to move on.
They no longer want to accept being trapped on a train with drunk and aggressive fans. They no longer want to walk through a city centre wondering whether a football crowd is going to turn. They no longer want their children watching adults scream abuse at referees in grassroots football. They no longer want female presenters being treated as trespassers in a game that belongs to everyone. They no longer want players and their families being treated as public property.
Above all, they no longer accept the lazy idea that abuse is somehow part of football’s culture.
There are workplaces in Britain where swearing at staff will get you removed. There are shops where aggressive behaviour leads to a ban. There are trains where passengers are told to report anti-social conduct. There are roads where drink-driving, once socially tolerated in some quarters, became morally radioactive after law, enforcement and public education worked together.
Football needs the same cultural turn.
The question should not be whether abuse can be managed. The question should be when football finally becomes a zero-tolerance environment.
The comparison with drink-driving matters. Drink-driving was not reduced because society politely asked people to do better. It changed because law, enforcement, public messaging, stigma and reporting created consequences. The social meaning changed. People stopped laughing it off. They stopped excusing the friend who had “only had a couple”. They started seeing it as dangerous, selfish and shameful.
Football abuse needs that kind of shift.
Duty of care: who owes it, and to whom?
The phrase “duty of care” can sound like something that belongs in a solicitor’s letter. But in football, it should be plain English.
If an organisation invites people into a space, profits from their presence, sells them alcohol, transports them, employs staff to manage them, broadcasts their emotions and builds business models around their loyalty, it cannot shrug when predictable harm follows.
So who owes the duty of care?
Clubs owe a duty to supporters, including away fans and families. They owe it to players, coaches, stewards, matchday staff, broadcasters, cleaners, caterers, disabled spectators, local residents and people passing near the ground.
Event organisers owe a duty to those attending and those working. That means safety cannot be limited to turnstiles, barriers and fire exits. It must include foreseeable behaviour: alcohol, crowd surges, transport pinch points, stewarding, abuse, intimidation, harassment and post-match dispersal.
Train operators owe a duty to ordinary passengers and staff. Matchday does not turn a public carriage into a football annex. A nurse, tourist, child, elderly passenger or family travelling for reasons entirely unrelated to football should not have to endure threats, chanting, intimidation or drunken disorder because a fixture has finished.
Pub companies and licensed premises owe a duty to their staff, customers and local communities. The prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, public nuisance and protection of children from harm are not optional extras. Football weekends cannot be treated as exemption zones.
Online platforms owe duties too. The abuse has moved from the terrace to the timeline. A manager’s wife, a player’s child, a referee, a female presenter or a young academy player should not be told to simply “log off” while platforms profit from the engagement created by outrage.
Governing bodies owe a duty to the game itself. The Premier League, EFL, FA, UEFA, FIFA, leagues, county FAs and grassroots structures all benefit from football’s scale. They cannot only intervene when reputational damage becomes inconvenient. They must create systems where abuse is reported, triaged, investigated and punished consistently.
And fans owe a duty too.
That point is sometimes avoided because supporters are the game’s lifeblood. But loving a club does not suspend basic obligations to other human beings. A ticket is not a licence to intimidate. A shirt is not a shield. Passion is not a legal defence.
Abuse has moved beyond one category
Football’s historic anti-discrimination work remains vital. Racism, sexism, homophobia, disability abuse, religious abuse and other forms of discrimination remain alive in the game. Nobody serious should pretend otherwise.
But football’s abuse problem has widened.
It now includes discrimination, but it is not limited to discrimination. It includes tragedy chanting, abuse of referees, abuse of managers, threats to players, harassment of women in football, intimidation on public transport, aggressive behaviour in pubs, online pile-ons, stalking of family members, abuse at grassroots and the growing sense that anyone connected to football is fair game.
Rebecca Barton, Project Director of the Football Safety App, says the game needs to understand the breadth of the problem.
“The Football Safety App was developed because abuse in football is fully out of control,” Barton says. “There are organisations doing important work on discrimination, and that work remains essential. But abuse in football has moved beyond discrimination alone. It still includes racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of hate, but it is also threats, name-calling, referee abuse, abuse of female presenters, abuse of managers, abuse on trains, abuse in pubs, abuse at grassroots and abuse online. The target changes, but the behaviour remains the same.”
That is the uncomfortable truth. The modern football abuser does not always need an ideology. Sometimes he only needs a mistake to rage at, a woman to belittle, a referee to blame, a rival scarf to confront, or a player’s family member to find online.
Barton says the culture of silence also has to change.
“Safe reporting is central,” she says. “Football has to move away from the idea that people should just put up with abuse or that reporting it is somehow wrong. Reporting is not grassing. Reporting is safeguarding. Reporting is how we protect people who want to enjoy the game.”
That sentence should be printed on the back of every match ticket.
Emile Heskey is right: why should people ignore abuse?
Former England striker Emile Heskey has spoken powerfully about this problem. He has described the racism he experienced as a young player and the abuse directed at his own children. He has also argued that social media has made abuse worse because people now have access to abuse anyone at any time.
Most importantly, Heskey has challenged the old instruction given to victims: ignore it.
Why should they?
Why should female presenters ignore it? Why should women footballers ignore it? Why should Black players ignore it? Why should referees ignore it? Why should managers’ families ignore it? Why should children at grassroots ignore adults screaming from the touchline? Why should commuters ignore a group of fans making a train carriage hostile? Why should bar staff ignore drunken aggression because it happens to arrive in club colours?
Heskey has also described the Football Safety App as being about more than racism. That distinction matters. The next stage in football safety has to recognise that abuse now arrives in many uniforms. Racism remains on the menu, but so do misogyny, threats, mob behaviour, public intimidation, targeted online harassment and plain old cruelty dressed up as banter.
The manager is now the weekend punching bag
Football managers have always been criticised. That is part of the job. Tactics are debated. Team selections are questioned. Substitutions are mocked. Football without argument would be soup without salt.
But criticism is not abuse.
A supporter saying a manager got the formation wrong is football. A supporter targeting the manager’s family is abuse. A fan forum debating whether a coach should be sacked is football. A mob tracking down a wife’s social media account after a bad result is abuse. A caller saying the team lacked discipline is football. A pile-on threatening a manager’s children is abuse.
The game has blurred these lines for too long. It has allowed the most poisonous voices to hide inside the language of passion. Then, when the consequences become visible, it offers familiar comfort phrases: football is emotional, pressure comes with the job, fans pay their money, managers are well compensated.
None of that answers the duty-of-care question.
A person can be wealthy and still be abused. A person can be famous and still be harmed. A person can manage a football club and still have a family entitled to live without threats.
Football’s workplace has expanded. It now includes stadiums, training grounds, press conferences, phones, feeds, inboxes and family accounts. Safeguarding must expand with it.
Why football, and not rugby or cricket?
No sport is innocent. Rugby has abuse. Cricket has racism, crowd trouble, sexism and alcohol problems. Tennis has online betting-related abuse. Formula One has fan toxicity. No sport gets to wear a halo.
But football is different in scale, frequency and emotional architecture.
It is tribal, weekly, global, hyper-bet, hyper-online and often low-scoring, which means one mistake can carry enormous symbolic weight. A missed penalty, a red card, a VAR decision or a goalkeeping error can become the entire emotional content of a weekend.
Football gives blame somewhere to live.
It is also deeply territorial. Clubs are tied to cities, estates, families, streets, pubs and histories. That can be beautiful. It can also curdle into gatekeeping. In some circles, supporters are told they are not “real” fans unless they come from a particular place.
That is absurd in a game that sells itself globally, tours globally, streams globally and markets itself to every continent. But the gatekeeping instinct matters because it reveals something darker: some fans do not simply support a club. They believe they own the right to decide who belongs.
That ownership mentality feeds abuse. It tells people they can police the boundaries. You are not local enough. You are not male enough. You are not knowledgeable enough. You are not tough enough. You are not one of us.
Female presenters feel that. Overseas fans feel that. New supporters feel that. Families feel that. Away fans feel that. Even supporters of the same club feel that when internal arguments turn nasty.
Football’s problem is not passion.
It is possession.
Grassroots: where children learn the language
If football wants to know where some of this starts, it should look at the touchline on a Sunday morning.
Children learn from adults. They learn when parents abuse referees. They learn when coaches scream. They learn when spectators treat a volunteer official like a professional villain. They learn when adults tell them the referee is corrupt, useless or blind. They learn when aggression is rewarded with attention. They learn when nobody intervenes.
By the time those children grow into teenagers and adults, abuse has become part of football’s language. Not always hatred. Sometimes just entitlement. The belief that because football matters to you, everyone else must absorb your anger.
Barton says this is one of the reasons research is needed.
“We are looking to commission a study with the University of Chester and other universities into the origins of abuse in football,” she says. “We need evidence. Is this learned at grassroots? Is it driven by alcohol, betting, online anonymity, family culture, group behaviour, weak enforcement, or the way tribalism is sold back to supporters? We need to understand where abuse starts if we are serious about changing it.”
That matters because football has often treated abuse as if it appears fully formed in adulthood.
It does not.
It is rehearsed, copied, normalised and excused.
Betting and the rage economy
Betting cannot be blamed for all football abuse. That would be too easy. Football had hooliganism before betting apps. It had racism before in-play markets. It had misogyny before accumulators could be built on a phone.
But betting has added fuel.
A fan who has gambled on a player to score, a defender to avoid a card, a goalkeeper to keep a clean sheet or a team to win may experience a mistake not as sporting misfortune but as personal financial loss. The player becomes the reason money disappeared. The referee becomes the thief. The manager becomes the idiot who “cost” the bet.
That does not excuse the abuse. It explains one channel through which anger is converted into harassment.
Football has accepted gambling money for years while also expressing shock at the intensity of fan reaction. It cannot have it both ways. If the sport surrounds itself with odds, markets, bet builders, in-play prompts and bookmaker messaging, it must also recognise that some supporters will interpret football through financial grievance.
When that grievance is then poured into X, Instagram or fan forums, the result is predictable.
The abuse does not evaporate when the phone is locked. It sits in people’s heads, homes and relationships.
The reporting gap
Football has become very good at telling people to report abuse. It is less convincing at explaining what happens next.
Where does the report go? Who sees it? Who triages it? Is it a club matter, police matter, transport matter, safeguarding matter, platform matter or all of them? Does the victim get feedback? Is the offender identified? Is there a ban? Is there a prosecution? Is there a warning? Is there data sharing? Is there prevention?
Without answers, reporting becomes a trapdoor. The victim drops the complaint in and hears nothing.
This is where the Football Safety App may have a role, but it cannot be the whole answer. No app can fix a culture alone. Technology can create a channel. It cannot replace enforcement, leadership or public courage.
Barton says the response from organisations has been mixed.
“We have spoken to British Transport Police, football policing bodies, clubs, train operators and other organisations,” she says. “Some have been very receptive. Some have been lukewarm. The lower-level EFL clubs have often been among the most serious about safeguarding because they understand the issue close up. But funding is a huge problem across football outside the top end.”
She adds that the app has tried to remove cost as a barrier.
“The Football Safety App costs nothing to users. It is funded through a rewards section, including discounts and schemes, because we wanted to find a practical way to support reporting and safety without asking ordinary fans to pay to feel safe.”
That is sensible. But football cannot outsource its conscience to one app. The real test is whether clubs, police, operators, pubs, leagues, platforms and government are prepared to build a reporting ecosystem where every complaint has somewhere to go and every serious incident has a consequence.
Government must stop treating football abuse as background noise
Football abuse has to move into the legislative mindset of government.
The issue touches transport, licensing, policing, online safety, safeguarding, women’s safety, workplace protection, child welfare and public order. It is not simply “football trouble”. It is a recurring national pattern with predictable flashpoints.
Arrests are only the visible fish. The river is wider.
There should be a serious parliamentary review of football-related abuse across physical and online spaces. Not another soft-focus campaign. A proper review that asks who is responsible, what data is missing, how reports are triaged, how banning orders are used, how online abuse is escalated, how train operators plan for fixtures, how pubs manage risk, how clubs protect staff and families, and how grassroots behaviour is addressed.
Scotland has at least shown that football-related abuse and disorder can be treated as a serious public policy issue. England, the Premier League, the EFL and the wider football pyramid must now show the same seriousness, without waiting for the next viral video, the next stabbing, the next player targeted, the next female presenter hounded, or the next train carriage turned into a moving cage.
Football has already shown that it can change when forced. Stadium safety changed after disaster. Racist chanting became less publicly tolerated after years of campaigning and punishment. Drink-driving culture changed because society decided the old excuses were no longer acceptable.
Now football abuse needs the same treatment.
Zero tolerance must mean something
“Zero tolerance” is one of those phrases that can become wallpaper. Everyone says it. Nobody reads it. It appears on posters, websites and pre-match announcements, then disappears the moment enforcement becomes awkward.
Real zero tolerance would mean something sharper.
It would mean lifetime bans for serious violence and threats. It would mean consistent stadium bans for abuse, not just for the handful of cases that go viral. It would mean clubs refusing to protect season-ticket revenue when a supporter has crossed the line. It would mean train operators working with police and clubs before major fixtures, not merely reacting afterwards. It would mean pubs refusing service and sharing intelligence where lawful and appropriate. It would mean online platforms responding quickly to targeted harassment. It would mean referees at grassroots being protected by leagues and county FAs. It would mean parents being removed from youth matches when they abuse officials. It would mean players’ families having clear routes to report online targeting. It would mean female presenters receiving institutional backing, not sympathetic silence.
Most of all, it would mean football fans themselves changing the social code.
The drink-driver became taboo not only because police acted, but because friends stopped excusing it. Football abuse will become taboo when other fans stop laughing, stop filming for entertainment, stop calling it passion, stop saying “that’s just football”, and start treating the abuser as the embarrassment.
Because that is what he is.
Not the proper fan. Not the loyal one. Not the passionate one.
The embarrassment.
The beautiful game is not supposed to feel unsafe
Football is the world’s game because it contains everything: beauty, grief, geography, memory, identity, theatre, luck, skill and noise. It lets strangers sing together. It lets cities feel briefly unified. It gives children heroes. It gives families rituals. It gives communities a drumbeat.
That is why abuse in football feels so ugly.
It poisons something communal.
It turns a stadium into a threat. It turns a train into a cage. It turns a phone into a weapon. It turns a woman with a microphone into a target. It turns a referee into prey. It turns a manager’s family into collateral damage. It turns a child’s grassroots match into an apprenticeship in aggression.
Football can do better than this. More importantly, football has to do better than this.
The old monster of hooliganism was not defeated. It was displaced. It moved from terraces to streets, from streets to stations, from stations to social media, from social media to family inboxes. Every time the game thinks it has solved abuse, the abuse changes shape.
So the response must change too.
Duty of care can no longer stop at the stadium gate. It must run through the whole football ecosystem: club, train, pub, street, platform, grassroots pitch, family home and phone screen.
Everyone who profits from football, organises football, polices football, broadcasts football or hosts football supporters has a part to play.
And every supporter has a choice.
The game can remain trapped in the tired old shrug: it is only football.
Or it can finally say what should have been said long ago.
It is football.
That is exactly why it matters.
To find out more about the Football Safety App go to www.footballsafetyapp.com or further information/demo contact info@footballsafetyapp.com
