Understand the sport and you understand much about the sometimes secret or unknown underpinnings of a country. If a person wants to truly understand the culture of many countries, they need to speak soccer. James Montague makes a good case that, now, the language of soccer would be a good rival. With the rise of the American dollar, English became the international language of business. After the 1600s, it was replaced by French. If a Spanish medieval courtier spoke to an Irish ambassador, they used Latin. Latin used to be the common language of intellectuals. In the aftermath, both Belgian government inquiries and British criminal investigations established that the English fans were solely to blame for the massacre. In all, 39 people were killed and over 600 were injured. They followed this up by throwing pavement piles at the retreating fans. They cornered thousands of Italians against a cement wall that then collapsed under the pressure. Liverpool soccer fans rampaged through the Belgian stadium. The audience thought that they were going to watch a soccer game what they saw was slaughter. The match was televised to hundreds-of-millions of people. It was a huge game – a combination of the financial might of the Super Bowl meets the international flavour of the United Nations. On June 14, 1985, the European Champions Cup Final was played between two of the most successful clubs in the world: England’s Liverpool and Italy’s Juventus. It was one of the biggest events in international sport, and it turned into a mass murder. Publisher: Penguin Random House UK, 2021.

With unprecedented insider access, the book investigates how ultras have grown into a fiercely political movement, embracing extremes on both the left and right fighting against the commercialisation of football and society - and against the attempts to control them by the authorities, who both covet and fear their power.1312: Among the Ultras – A Journey with the World’s Most Extreme Fans In this book, James Montague goes underground to uncover the true face of this dissident force for the first time.ġ312: Among the Ultras tells the story of how the movement began and how it grew to become the global phenomenon that now dominates the stadiums from the Balkans and Buenos Aires. Yet they remain unknown: an anti-establishment force that is transforming both football and politics. A hugely visible and controversial part of the global game, their credo and aesthetic replicated in almost every league everywhere on earth, a global movement of extreme fandom and politics is also one of the largest youth movements in the world. You can see them, but you don't know them.

1312 by James Montague