Football

I was thinking about this last night - I don't believe there's much inherently worse about the English populace vs French/Italian/German etc, but why is it that we put on such a shitshow around the football? I reckon it's - in part at least - that because of the genuine unpleasantness of watching live football in the 80s/early 90s the 'reasonable' fans and family groups etc stopped going, effectively ceding the space to the extremes who could act however they like. I'd draw a parallel here with how we've ceded town centres/nightlife to the extreme drinkers. Who hasn't sat in a French/Spanish/Italian square at 1am marvelling at the mix of people still out and about and the - generally speaking - absence of groups of drunk aggressive men swaggering about looking for trouble. Whereas I guess in part due to weather/lifestyle but also the retreat from pubs towards eating/drinking at home in British culture we've let our town centres become no-go stag-do playgrounds and this spirit of 'I can do whatever I want when I'm drunk' has become the hallmark of English drinking culture and is exacerbated whenever the football's on or when people get together on holiday etc...

No idea what the solution is - maybe the silent and reasonable majority just need to get out to the football and start drinking\eating in town centres again?