Friedrich "Fritz" Walter was a German footballer who spent his entire senior career at 1. FC Kaiserslautern. He usually played as an attacking midfielder or inside forward. In his time with the Germany and West Germany national teams, he appeared in 61 games and scored 33 goals, and was the captain of the team that won the 1954 FIFA World Cup. After his career, he was named honorary captain of the Germany national team.
Football hooliganism, also known as soccer hooliganism, football rioting or soccer rioting, constitutes violence and other destructive behaviors perpetrated by spectators at association football events. Football hooliganism typically involves conflict between pseudo-tribes, formed to intimidate and attack supporters of other teams. Certain clubs have long-standing rivalries with other clubs and hooliganism associated with matches between them can be more severe. An example of this is the Devon Derby . Conflict may arise at any point, before, during or after matches and occasionally outside of game situations. Participants often select locations away from stadiums to avoid arrest by the police, but conflict can also erupt spontaneously inside the stadium or in the surrounding streets. In extreme cases, hooligans, police and bystanders have been killed, and riot police have intervened. Hooligan-led violence has been called "aggro" and "bovver".
The Chelsea Headhunters are a notorious English football hooligan firm linked to the London football club Chelsea.
Miroslav "Ćiro" Blažević was a Bosnian-Croatian professional football manager and player.
1. Fußballclub Lokomotive Leipzig e.V. is a German football club based in the locality of Probstheida in the Südost borough of Leipzig, Saxony. The club was previously known as VfB Leipzig and was the first national champion of Germany. It has also been known as SC Leipzig. The club won four titles in the FDGB-Pokal and the 1965–66 Intertoto Cup during the East German era. It also finished runner-up in the 1986–87 European Cup Winners' Cup. 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig was renamed VfB Leipzig after German re-unification and managed to qualify for the Bundesliga in 1993. However, like many clubs of the former DDR-Oberliga, VfB Leipzig faced financial difficulties in reunified Germany and a steady decline soon followed. 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig was relaunched in 2003 and began climbing through the divisions. As of 2021, the team competes in the fourth-tier division, Regionalliga Nordost. The 1. in front of the club's name indicates that it was the first to be founded in the city.
Horst Hrubesch is a German professional football manager and former player who manages the Germany women national team. As a player, Hrubesch won three West German championships with his club side, Hamburger SV, as well as the European Cup title in 1983. He was a key member of the West Germany team that won the 1980 European Championship and made it to the final of the 1982 World Cup, losing to Italy. His nickname was Das Kopfball-Ungeheuer for his heading skills as a centre forward.
The National Gendarmerie is one of two national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, with additional duties from the Ministry of Armed Forces. Its responsibilities include policing smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas, crowd and riot control, and criminal investigation, including cybercrime. By contrast, the National Police is a civilian law enforcement agency that is in charge of policing cities and larger towns. Because of its military status, the Gendarmerie also fulfills a range of military and defence missions. The Gendarmerie has a strength of around 102,269 people.
Eintracht Frankfurt is a German women's association football club based in Frankfurt. Its first team currently plays in the German top flight, Frauen-Bundesliga. From 1998 to 2020, the club was known as 1. FFC Frankfurt.
The Zulu Warriors are a football hooligan firm associated with English football club, Birmingham City. The Zulu Warriors were formed in the late 1980s and the name allegedly came from a chant of "Zulu, Zulu" which Manchester City fans aimed at Birmingham in 1982, due to their multicultural following. However, both the "Zulu" chant and the term "Zulu Warriors", in the context of a fan following rather than as an organised gang, were in use from at least the mid 1970s.
The MIGs are a football hooligan "firm" associated with the English football club Luton Town, which was originally formed in the 1980s.
The Suicide Squad was an association football hooligan firm linked to Burnley Football Club. The self-imposed title is derived from previous behaviour at away games where the single-minded involvement in violence against overwhelming odds could be described as suicidal. The name became synonymous with the group during the early 1980s.
Football hooliganism in Poland first developed as a recognised phenomenon in the 1970s, and has continued since then with numerous recognised hooligan firms and large-scale fights. Until 1997, the number of related incidents rose, according to Przemysław Piotrowski of Jagiellonian University. The problem of hooliganism related to football has been compared to what he described as the dark days of football hooliganism in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Hooliganism in Poland is considered to be on a larger scale than hooliganism in Britain. Many Polish football clubs have hooligan firms associated with them.
Marcel Schmelzer is a German former professional footballer who spent his entire career for Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund, serving as captain from 2016 to 2018. Mainly deployed as a left-back, he was capped by Germany at international level.
Aston Villa Hardcore is a football hooligan firm associated with the Premier League club Aston Villa, based in Birmingham, England.
Mike Wunderlich is a German former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder.
Beginning in at least the 1960s, the United Kingdom gained a reputation worldwide for football hooliganism; the phenomenon was often dubbed the British or 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 continental 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.
Felicitas Rauch is a German professional footballer who plays as a defender for the North Carolina Courage of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the Germany national team. She previously played for Frauen-Bundesliga clubs Turbine Potsdam and VfL Wolfsburg.
Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi terrorist organisation that was founded in 1992. It originated in the United Kingdom with ties to movements in Canada and the United States. Since then, it has spread to other countries, including Germany. Combat 18 members have been suspected of being involved and directly responsible in the deaths of numerous immigrants, non-whites, dissidents, and the German politician Walter Lübcke as well as internecine killings of Combat 18 members.
The UEFA Euro 2016 football championships in France saw several recorded instances of football hooliganism and related violence between fans, both at the venues where matches took place, and in cities near the participating stadiums. The violence started immediately before the tournament began, and involved clashes between several countries. Some of the rioting came from established gangs and football hooligan organisations, which deliberately intended to provoke violence. They clashed with riot police who controlled the crowds using tear gas and a water cannon.
The Hanover stabbing that occurred on 26 February 2016 was a terrorist stabbing of a police officer in Hanover, Germany, by a 15-year-old girl born to a Moroccan mother and a German father. She had been raised under the influence of salafist preachings, as early as 7 years. She had been investigated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for preparing a serious crime already in 2014 and had traveled to meet ISIS members in Istanbul in November 2015. It was the first reported attack by an ISIS sympathiser in Germany.
