Brutal Brawls and Broken Bottles: Unseen Photos from the Golden Age of Greek Hooliganism

Greek hooligans share photos from the most brutal brawls they attended in the 1990s.

by Pavlos Toubekis

March 16, 2016, 7:00am

All photos courtesy of anonymous football supporters.

This article was originally published on VICE Greece

The words "Battlefield" and "Jungle" must have been among the most widely used on the front pages of Greek sports papers in the 1990s. Normally appearing on Mondays, they would be used to describe brawls that had taken place on any given Sunday's football match, between fans of rival teams or between fans and police, inside and outside football stadiums, before, after or during a match.

But why were hooligan brawls so common in Greece in the 1990s? One reason could be that back then it was legal for fans to travel in packs to away games.

We got in touch with a bunch of football supporters who were present at those brawls and asked them to let us into their photo archives. All the photos were taken before or after a match and show supporters of the Greek teams AEK, Aris, Olympiakos, Panathinaikos and PAOK. For obvious reasons, all our sources asked to remain anonymous.

Scroll down for more pictures.