Criticised for the timing of its release, during Euro 2004, The Football Factory journeys to the heart of English soccer hooliganism. The movie's writer-director, Nick Love, talks to Michael Dwyer

TODAY'S release of the British soccer hooliganism drama, The Football Factory, could hardly be more timely, coming as it does hot on the heels of rioting by England supporters at the Euro 2004 tournament in Portugal. Their violent behaviour comes as no surprise to anyone, and certainly not to Nick Love, the movie's writer-director, who came under attack in the media when his film was released in Britain last month.

"There was a controversy raging in the British press for weeks before the film came out," Love says on a visit to Dublin last weekend. A 34-year-old graduate of Bournemouth Film School, Love is passionate on the subject of his movie and its themes, and he talks with an infectious energy.

"Obviously, all that publicity did the film a lot of good in the end because it drew such attention to it. But all the tabloids were attacking the film, saying that it glorified violence and that it was wrong to release it with Euro 2004 so near. Of course, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you know, with English fans fighting in Portugal, but that would have happened whether or not the film came out. They've been fighting for years, so why should it be any different at this tournament?"

Love's film specifically addresses how teenage males become drawn into the violence associated with being an English football supporter. "A lot of it now has to do with the reputation the fans have," he believes. "I'm a lifelong Millwall supporter and over the years, I've seen most of the kids who support Millwall turn into thugs - not all of them, but about 90 per cent of them. You see them when they're 15 years old and three years later they're part of the Millwall young 'firm'.

"Why is it that kids of the same age go to Wimbledon, or cricket or rugby, and they don't behave like this? I think it's because England now has this reputation for having violent football supporters and people who are drawn to drinking and fighting gravitate towards football more than any other sport." He firmly believes that the social background of violent football fans is irrelevant. "The reports in the papers on the guys being nicked in Portugal proves that," he says. "It's not about social deprivation or internal decay within the family structure or any of that bollocks that psychiatrists have been on about for the past three decades. It's about guys from all backgrounds, many of them with good jobs and degrees and living with their families, but they get a buzz from getting drunk and fighting. They're thrill-seekers getting off on all that adrenalin. Your body produces natural endorphins and you're high as a kite.

"I've seen the violence at firsthand down the years as a bystander. When I was younger I was quite excited by it, but I didn't have the appetite for it that some of my old mates do. Sober or drunk, they literally just love fighting, the adrenalin of steaming into people. I just don't have the propensity for it. I think it's really scary."

The film culminates in an impressively choreographed pitched battle between arch-rivals - in this case, Chelsea and Millwall supporters - which took a good deal of careful planning. "We didn't have a lot of money - the film was made for half a million pounds - but we spent a lot of time hand-picking the right people to be extras in it. I wanted people who, like me, had been around violence and could remember it and feel what it's like, but you don't want crazy football thugs who are going to go battering each other.

"It's tricky to film because there is the danger of something going wrong. It's different in Gladiator, where they're all actors or trained stuntmen and they know the rules." Were there any injuries? "There were a few broken ribs and one guy got a fractured elbow because they got carried away."

Love's screenplay for the film is based on John King's critically acclaimed book, The Football Factory, and he candidly admits that he and King had several disagreements about his adaptation. "He's a funny one, really," Love says. "He's a nice guy, but he comes from a very different era than me. I'm 34 and he's about 10 years older than me. We clashed quite a few times because ultimately I'm a filmmaker and to me, a film should be progressive. We live now in an MTV generation and you've got to make films in a very stylistic way and at the same time be creative. You've got to make films that engage young people. Look at a film like Cold Mountain. It fucking bombed.

"John King and I had very different opinions about how the film should be made. His book was very nostalgic about football culture in the 1980s, but I felt that wouldn't work as a film, that it had to be about now. I think novelists tend to be very insular, whereas when I write a film, I can only write one way. I just get stuck into it. I wrote this script in four days, working day and night around the clock."

Love made his feature film début three years ago with the low-budget Goodbye Charlie Bright, an engaging coming-of-age story set in south London, which featured several of his Football Factory cast, notably Danny Dyer and Roland Manookian. "It was a very small film, a flawed first film with a good heart," he says. It went straight to video in Ireland.

In releasing The Football Factory, he and the film's producers took the calculated risk of distributing it through their own production company, Vertigo Films. "As filmmakers, we wanted to make some money," he says. "It was as simple as that. We were just sick of being fucked by distributors. You could tell by the response to the film that it was going to do well. All the distributors wanted to buy it, every single one of them, but all offering terrible deals and corporate hell.

"We knew we'd never see a penny out of it that way, and we felt we couldn't do any worse by distributing it ourselves. We raised enough money from private investors to cover prints and advertising and just went straight to the exhibitors, and they all wanted it. We did the artwork and the posters ourselves. It's not exactly rocket science. It was hard work and stress we didn't need, but it certainly paid off for us."

Love is now preparing his next movie, which he wrote in six days. It doesn't have a title yet, but once again it will star Danny Dyer, and it starts shooting in Spain in late September. "It's a black comedy set during the 1980s about the cocaine and marijuana smuggling trade on the Costa del Sol," he says. "Although it's a comedy, it's actually a classic morality tale - like Scarface or Boogie Nights - about one young character going through all these experiences on the Costa del Crime."

The Football Factory opens today and is featured in the reviews section.