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Since the very beginnings of soccer in Europe, spectator violence has always been a feature of matches. From the 1960s onwards, the violence that had hitherto been essentially spontaneous became mainly premeditated and carried out by regularly violent groups of supporters. Among them, hooligan gangs have specialized in physical confrontation, to the point of organizing arranged fights far from the stadiums, while ultras groups liven up the stadiums, sometimes using violence to win over opposing supporters or to voice their criticism of the ongoing transformations in soccer. While countries such as England and Germany have been developing coherent policies for managing violence and fans since the 1990s, France is struggling to build such an approach, which raises the question of how best to reconcile the imperatives of safety and respect for individual freedoms.