John Paul II played as a goalkeeper in his youth and, during his tenure from 1978 to 2005, he tried to preach peace instead of violence to hooligans who, in those times, were even more virulent around soccer stadiums than they are today.
Human rights groups said the government had caved in to hooligans.
From there, it went on to refer to any hooligan or noisy, loutish individual, and is these days perhaps most commonly encountered with ".com" after it.
Wang disregarded the rules about privacy in publishing the letter, Liu wrote later, "because he thinks that you have to be petty to handle a petty guy, to be a hooligan to fight a hooligan, but he doesn't seem to understand that this will make all of us hooligans together".
The EDL, originally formed by football supporters in Luton, claims to be a non-violent group campaigning against Muslim fundamentalism but is alleged to have links to former hooligan networks and known British National Party agitators.
The club have resolved to send the strongest possible message to the hooligan minority, partly because they are mindful that, in their new stadium, they have 10,000 children among their season ticket holders.
Japan and South Korea have vowed to block hooligans who try to enter through third countries, and both sides have promised to prosecute rabble-rousers under local law.
These ranged from Engaged (1877), a farce about greed that still enjoys revivals today, to The Hooligan (1911), in which a condemned simpleton suffers a fatal heart attack in his prison cell.
Recriminations for the government's failure to prevent hooligans from getting to Euro 2000, and soul-searching about the culture which produces the thugs in the first place, have been intense.The tournament started hopefully.
