Hit and tell: a review essay on the soccer hooligan memoir

Abstract

This is a review essay on the genre of British soccer hooligan books. These 'hit and tell' confessional tales of soccer casuals fandom are told in the form of an historical memoir. Five examples of hit and tell books are reviewed and assessed against the novelistic accounts found in contemporary football fiction books by authors such as John King and Kevin Sampson and the more rigorous demands of the sociology of soccer culture. It is argued in the essay on hit and tell writing that such populist publishing can be harnessed to fill in gaps in historical and ethnographic work in the sociology of soccer fan cultures, but that what is needed in the future, above all, is better theorizing of soccer culture and its modernities.