Fanzine: The story of football's alternative press

The vivid story of the fanzine movement that gave supporters a voice and changed football forever

Demonised and left to watch games in decrepit stadiums, life as a football supporter in the 1980s was a demoralising experience. While some fans turned to violence, many more turned to typewriters, Tippex and staple guns to create a mass movement that transformed a bleak time into a hopeful one.

Adopting a DIY punk ethos, fanzine founders spread their pages across the land. Their funny, articulate and occasionally scandalous creations were sold outside grounds from Inverness to Torquay, with most British clubs covered – sometimes by multiple titles. These inky mouthpieces questioned the old order, frightening those who ran the game and provoking many a banning.

Through extensive archival research and interviews, Fanzine tells the story of the phenomenon during its boom years. It offers an alternative history of football in a monumental period – from Heysel to the Premier League, via Hillsborough and Italia ’90 – as witnessed from the stands. Deploying fans’ colourful and often sardonic words, Fanzine transports readers back to the terraces of old, for better or
worse – bad Bovril and suspect pies are never far away.

Told in book form for the first time, Fanzine is the poignant, nostalgic and absorbing story of an era that changed going to the match forever.