Except there's a core of truth in what they say, though I might differ on the point about protests. Football hooliganism was well on the way to being solved by the early 90s. The international ban ended in 1990. It was the seventies and eighties that most would have been hesitant to take the kids along to a match, and the big clubs had scary reputations. Most of the measures since have
not been necessary, and most of the fixing of the problem wasn't down to cameras.
Police tactics, ground changes, putting responsibility more on to the clubs, and a good degree of managing the groups of supporters. Companies would once finish early if there was a Wednesday match and their office was even vaguely on a route to the ground. By the nineties and noughties, normality was far more expected.
Far more has been for security theatre and red top media campaigns that the "government must DO something!!!!". So government does do something. Like rings of steel around London. Tanks at airports (huh?) and all the rest. Despite this a man in a van can still perform a terrorist outrage on a bridge, or take a bomb to a teen pop concert.
We're far more likely to hear some days after that some perpetrator was known to police or security services, than all the security theatre prevented some atrocity, or the perpetrator was arrested en route.
Police tactics, ground changes, putting responsibility more on to the clubs, and a good degree of managing the groups of supporters. Companies would once finish early if there was a Wednesday match and their office was even vaguely on a route to the ground. By the nineties and noughties, normality was far more expected.
Far more has been for security theatre and red top media campaigns that the "government must DO something!!!!". So government does do something. Like rings of steel around London. Tanks at airports (huh?) and all the rest. Despite this a man in a van can still perform a terrorist outrage on a bridge, or take a bomb to a teen pop concert.
We're far more likely to hear some days after that some perpetrator was known to police or security services, than all the security theatre prevented some atrocity, or the perpetrator was arrested en route.