LONDON -- This is not like going to the Super Bowl. It's more like a trip into a war zone.
On a wet winter night, the neighborhood by Highbury Stadium crackles with tension as Millwall, the dreaded soccer rival from south of the Thames River, meets its northern opponent, Arsenal.
Police show up with dogs and riot gear. Cameras focus on spectators, not players. Every Millwall fan -- toddler or grandmother -- is frisked and seated behind the south goal.
And then, 15 minutes before the start of the match, there is this:
Seventy men -- surrounded by a dozen mounted police, 20 patrolmen and five police vans -- are marched like prisoners through the crowd. There is pandemonium as a horse roughly the size of a baby elephant nearly stomps a child. Arsenal fans begin cursing. One man is arrested, while others are searched and seated. The entire scene is videotaped by a London policeman.
Millwall's hooligans have arrived, and like the rest of their kind these days, the cops have them on a very tight leash.
Britain's soccer hooligans, the scourge of European sports during the 1980s, are in retreat. They have been confronted by an array of high-tech surveillance equipment, police intelligence, toughened laws and improved safety features at the country's stadiums.
And they are also confronted by one tough cop, Peter Chapman, a no-nonsense north Englishman who heads the National Criminal Intelligence football unit.
"Hooligans bring shame on the country," Mr. Chapman says, his voice rising in indignation. "When I travel abroad, the one thing that makes me ashamed is the behavior of my fellow countrymen in other places. Football is only a game -- it's not a religion."
In the 1980s, Britain's hooligans turned a game of beauty into a dance with death.
Before the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus of Italy at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, a riot left 39 dead and 600 injured.
Four years later, Nottingham Forest met Liverpool in the Football Association Cup semifinal at Hillsborough Stadium.
All the disgusting elements of English soccer -- the hooligans, the dungeon-like stadiums, the greedy clubs, the ill-prepared policing -- converged in one horrifying incident. Fans, herded like cattle into standing-room-only terraces, wedged against fences that would not topple, crushed one another.
Ninety-five people died to see a soccer game.
Something had to change. And it has.
Soccer safer, more lucrative
Soccer in England is safer and more lucrative than ever. Now, the game's problems are self-inflicted, from kickback scandals involving coaches, to a star player's confession of drug abuse, to a star goalkeeper deflecting bribery allegations.
Last week it was a player, Eric Cantona of Manchester United, who acted violently enough against a spectator to get his own career suspended. The French-born striker landed a kung-fu-like kick to the chest of a spectator who had taunted him mercilessly.
But those are the exceptions.
Soccer these days has transformed itself into big business, where a player like Manchester United's Andy Cole can be bought for $11 million. There is no room for brawling when a buck can be made. The stadiums are polished. The ticket prices have been boosted.
Most important, the game-day security has been made so tight, it is positively Orwellian.
They don't just have soccer matches in this country, they mount full-press intelligence operations, overseen by Mr. Chapman's unit, which has its headquarters down the hallway from the Interpol office in London.
Mr. Chapman knows all too well the havoc that unruly fans can cause. He witnessed the horror of Hillsborough.
On a tour of his office, he points out a glass case, filled with the weapons of the hooligan trade: knives, brass knuckles, flare guns and pepper spray.
Who's who of hooligans
In a video control room, Mr. Chapman and his staff are able to pull up videotapes of every game played in England's top two divisions. They aren't looking for spectacular plays -- they are looking for fights.
A computer database holds 6,000 names and faces, a who's who of hooligans banned from stadiums or arrested for fighting.
"We are dealing with people who travel the length and breadth of this country," Mr. Chapman said. "It's imperative we have images of these fans."
And intelligence.
Nearly all the 92 professional soccer teams in Britain still have their hard-core hooligan element, fans who love the game and love to fight. It's about turf, about geographical rivalries and about macho posturing. It's about stuff as trivial as drinking in a pub in the other team's back yard. And it's about something as serious as assault.
Abroad, patriotism sets in. The British Empire may be dead, but British hooligans can match up against the Germans, the Dutch and the Italians on a soccer field.
Every team is assigned at least one police officer, whose job is to know the whereabouts and makeup of the hooligan element. On game days that are especially tense, the officer from a visiting team will travel to the game site to help identify "his" hooligans.
The program has been successful. In the past two seasons, arrests at game sites have run at 4,500 out of a total attendance of 20 million.
Those who commit acts of violence either at soccer matches or en route can receive stiff prison sentences and orders banning them from future games. Under the Football Offences Act of 1991, throwing objects, indecent and racist chanting, and going onto the playing area are illegal.
But there's more to hooliganism than the game at the stadium.
"We've moved the problem away from the stadium," says Mr. Chapman. "It's in the transit network. The rail network. The bus network. The hooligans can strike at a sleepy, market town far from the stadium."
'These are not crazies'
The stereotype of the hooligan is this: young, poor, unemployed, and engaged in random and senseless acts of violence.
The stereotype is wrong.
"These are not crazies," says John Williams, director of Leicester University's Center for Football Research. "They have families. They work. This is a celebration of a particular kind of culture."
Take Bill, for example. He won't give his last name or allow himself to be photographed because, like others who have been identified as soccer hooligans, he is under surveillance by police when he attends matches. He is 30, a carpenter, soft-spoken, impeccably mannered, dressed smartly in white running shoes, black jeans and a black Orlando Magic sweat shirt.
For 16 years he has run with "the boys," as they call themselves, the members of Millwall's "firm." Once, they had 400 members. Now, they're down to a hardy 70, with about 200 turning out for big games. Bill has risen through the ranks, from throwing bottles and rocks as a teen, to punches and worse as an adult. He says he has been arrested many times. A year ago, he received an 18-month suspended sentence and a $1,500 fine for plowing through a crowd and attacking opposing fans at a soccer match.
"Don't glamorize this," he says.
But he yearns to explain the compulsion that fuels his passion.
"We are not crazy," he says. "We are not violent animals. You've got to love the football club to be involved. It's like defending your honor, almost."
'The firm'
The intent of "the firm," he explains, is not to inflict indiscriminate damage but to meet the other team's "firm" for a few brief moments before or after the match. Cellular telephones are very big with hooligans now. They actually call one another to set up the fight. Then, if the police aren't tipped off, if the mood is right, there is a brawl.
For a few moments, the members of the firm revel in the fury.
When the fight ends, one firm may even leave its calling card. Among the Millwall collection is this:
"Congratulations. You've just met Millwall's Young Foundation. Tel: 999. (Ask for Ambulance)."
"Most of us work," Bill said. "Because of the climate and the way the country is, going to a match, doing what we do, this gives us pleasure. No one can take it away from us. It's us. We are Millwall. We are the club. Think of it this way. The best TV's in the world? Sony. Best stereos? Pioneer. You talk about hooligans, you talk Millwall."
Millwall's fans, clustered in a down-at-heels community called Bermondsey, have earned a fierce reputation over the years.
In 1985, thousands of fans charged the field in a match against Luton Town, symbol of a game gone mad. And just last year, 100 fans invaded the field during a match with Derby.
Can't shake reputation
The football club has worked to quell violence, building an all-seat stadium with an expansive family-only enclosure, hiring community organizers, creating local youth teams, attempting to bridge a yawning racial gap that has troubled the area for decades.
Still, the team and the fans can't shake their reputation.
There are still people like Ray. He is 47, the George Foreman of hooligans. A truck driver, twice married, father of two, veteran of the Mods vs. Rockers gang wars of the 1960s, he still fights for Millwall in the 1990s. He lives for the "buzz" of hooliganism.
But the price is getting too heavy for some.
Bill, the carpenter, is still willing to fight for his turf. Yet he has no intention of going to prison.
"We've been going through this for years and years," he said. "It used to be, you'd get arrested, get a little fine and go home. We were getting away with murder. But not anymore. Within the next 10 years, football violence will be finished."