Most irritating of all is his determination to paint British soccer as a gentleman's game, a notion United's real fans would no doubt treat with the scorn it deserves.

To an American reader his fan's account of British soccer may be even more resistible than John Updike on baseball would be to a Brit.

Interviews with World Cup heroes and superstars of British soccer.

For the troubled sport of British soccer, with its international reputation for hooliganism and crowd disturbances, the wish for tranquillity would seem to be a forlorn hope.

The tragedy is the worst in the history of British soccer, surpassing the death toll of 66 people in 1971, when crowd barriers collapsed during a match in Glasgow.

The city also bears some responsibility for the tarnished image of British soccer.

Traditional chants are as essential to British soccer as the seventh-inning stretch is to American baseball.

In British soccer, people talk about "our lads," as if the national team is some village team gone off to play the next village.

Roadburg (1980) provides a checklist of the key historical, ecological and social factors distinguishing British soccer as a spectator sport from its American counterpart.

British soccer is a unique duality - the national conduit for open displays of straight male affection and its closely related inverse, casual male violence.