2,456 words

English football fans in Europe during the 1980s and ‘90s were not ambassadors either for the British game or Britain itself. Increasingly cheap flights across Europe meant that vast numbers of fat, pasty, sweaty, bald or balding men were able to enjoy spoiling the afternoons of those wishing to use cafés and bars in Portugal, or France, or Malta.

Whenever England or a top English side played in Europe, a town square somewhere would soon fill with beer bellies on shirtless, gross, and grubby torsos.