«With his first book, John King has written a cult classic for our times: telling, for once, the truth about soccer violence. Forget the armchair nostalgia of «Fever Pitch» of the transatlantic reportage of «Among the Thugs» — this is a book that gets inside. A collection of linked stories, «The Football Factory» centres on Vince Matthews, a seasoned Chelsea hooligan who represents a disaffected society operating by appalling rules. From first-hand experience, we are shown the usual mix of social degradation, unemployment, racism, excessive drink, bad sex and casual violence — the facts of life — but also how they fall into a political context of surveillance, media manipulation and division. Football violence has not been eradicated, it has simply been moved out of the grounds and beyond the cameras. Like the slaughter of Iraqi conscripts in the Gulf War, hooligans and what they do have been pushed under the carpet: out of sight, out of mind. This is what «The Football Factory» is about.»
