The day I commenced the research for this book in August 1998 I arrived at the BayArena, home of German first division side Bayer Leverkusen. The name of the ground had been changed at the beginning of the season to promote the team’s sponsor and owner – the pharmaceutical multinational Bayer. I had bought a season ticket for the largest section of the recently redeveloped ground named ‘Family Street’. Nothing in the crowd savoured of the scenes of footballrelated violence and hooliganism that had come to sum up the public image of the sport in the years before and after the Heysel disaster in which 39 fans.
