Various on ‘hooligan’ from Word Detective and others:

The word first appeared in England in the summer of 1898 in newspaper articles about a gang of young street toughs who called themselves "the Hooligans," although apparently none of them was actually named Hooligan. Some authorities at the time maintained that "hooligan" was a mispronunciation of "Hooley's gang," but no one was ever able to trace a specific "Hooley," so that theory remains unverified. Another possible source of the name is a music hall song of the period featuring a rowdy Irish family called the Hooligans.

The following extract from an encyclopedia entry is a splendid example of British understatement: “Hooligan: The term has been widely used since (at least) the 1990s to describe various street gangs of youths behaving indecorously.”

The behaviour now known as 'football hooliganism' originated in England in the early 1960s, and has been linked with the televising of matches (and of pitch-invasions, riots etc.) and with the 'reclaiming' of the game by the working classes. In other European countries, similar patterns of behaviour emerged about 10 years later, in the early 1970s.

The game of football has long been associated with violence since its beginnings in 13th century England. Medieval football matches involved hundreds of players, and were essentially pitched battles between the young men of rival villages. Only two periods in British history have been relatively free of football-related violence: the inter-war years and the decade following the Second World War.

Hooligans have also attached themselves to other sports. In Canada, crowd violence at hockey games is common, even at schoolboy level, though the term "hooligan" is not generally used.