First Thoughts

My first thought when I started reading Among the Thugs and understood what it was about, was "wow that's so true." I love soccer and I play soccer, yet I lived in Scotland for four years and never went to a single professional soccer match in the UK. The games are exactly the way Buford describes them. People drink a lot in the UK to begin with (tends to happen when you're stuck on a cold rainy island with no sun your whole life) and the normal amount of alcohol assumed by the British is approximately quadrupled in the presence of footy, as they call it. It gets pretty rough. All professional stadiums in the UK that I've seen have bars available for every seating level. And the tour guide at the Arsenal stadium made sure to tell us about the time when nearly the entire stadium missed a goal thirty seconds into half time because they were all still in the bar buying more drinks.
And it's not like it's a really diverse crowd going to see these games, no way. Large, white, football-going British men all look alike. Mick from Among the Thugs is slightly more hardcore than most, yet I would say he's a pretty adequate stereotype.

Moral of the story, Bill Buford is an extremely brave man for mixing in with those men voluntarily. I certainly preferred to keep my distance.