Quick Take
- Narration: James Montague narrates his own work, which transforms the listening experience. His embedded journalism reads differently in his own voice than it would in any other.
- Themes: Football ultras, politics and sport, the commercialization of soccer, global youth movements
- Mood: Immersive and unsettling
- Verdict: A serious piece of embedded journalism that treats the ultra movement as the genuine political phenomenon it is, not a curiosity or a cautionary tale.
I had watched ultras from a safe distance for years before reading this book: the tifo displays, the synchronized chanting, the banners I could never quite read. They seemed like something between atmosphere and theater. James Montague’s reporting changed that impression substantially. By the time I was an hour into 1312: Among the Ultras, I understood that I had been looking at the surface of something much larger and more complex.
Montague is a journalist who has spent years covering global football, and this book represents his attempt to actually get inside the ultra movement, not observe it from the press box but gain access to the people who organize it, fund it, live inside it. That access is what makes the book valuable and what makes it occasionally uncomfortable. One reviewer noted that Montague literally puts himself in the firing line at times, and that is not hyperbole.
Our Take on 1312: Among the Ultras
The book opens with a simple and useful framing: ultras are visible everywhere in global football, but almost nothing that is understood about them from outside is actually accurate. The media narrative tends to collapse them into a single category, usually some variant of dangerous hooligans with political grievances. Montague’s reporting resists that collapse. He traces the movement from its origins in Italian football in the late 1960s through its spread across the Balkans, South America, the Middle East, and beyond, and in each location he finds a different version of the same phenomenon, shaped by local politics, economics, and the specific relationship between football clubs and the communities that surround them.
The political range within the ultra world is part of what makes Montague’s account so interesting and so necessary. There are explicitly antifascist ultra groups and explicitly far-right ones. There are groups that have mobilized against the commercialization of top-flight football, fighting the transformation of their clubs into corporate entertainment products. There are groups that have been co-opted by political movements entirely external to football. Montague holds all of this in frame without flattening it, which is the book’s most significant achievement.
Why Listen to 1312: Among the Ultras
Montague narrating his own work is a significant advantage here. His embedded journalism, the nights in Serbian stadium tunnels, the conversations with group leaders who prefer not to be named, the moments when he is navigating real personal risk to get information, reads differently when delivered in his own voice. There is a directness to his self-narration that a professional narrator could not reproduce, because the specific texture of how he describes danger is something only he can carry.
Reviewers have consistently called this one of the best books ever written about football and culture, and that assessment is not unreasonable. The book sits in a tradition of sports journalism that treats its subject as a lens onto larger social and political realities rather than a contained entertainment world. Nick Hornby mapped English football fandom from the inside; Montague is doing something similar but from an outside perspective that gains access through sustained reporting rather than autobiography.
What to Watch For in 1312: Among the Ultras
The book does not offer easy conclusions about the ultra movement. It is not a condemnation, and it is not a celebration. The opening reviewer note, that this book is not for people who do not want politics in their football, is precisely right. If you approach football as pure sport and find political engagement in fan culture irritating, this book will be a frustrating listen. If you understand that politics and football have never been separable, particularly at the level Montague is reporting, this is essential material.
At nearly fourteen hours, the book covers a lot of ground geographically and historically. Some sections are denser with context than others, and the Balkans chapters in particular require some background knowledge about Yugoslav dissolution and the role football clubs played in nationalist movements during the 1990s. Montague provides that context, but listeners with existing knowledge will absorb it more fluidly.
Who Should Listen to 1312: Among the Ultras
Anyone seriously interested in football as a cultural and political force. Listeners drawn to embedded journalism that takes real personal risk to get to its material. Fans of global football who want to understand the stadium sections they have seen from a distance. Not suited to listeners who prefer sports coverage that stays cleanly separated from political analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the book explain the number 1312 in the title, and what does it mean in ultra culture?
Yes. Montague addresses the significance of the number in the context of the ultra and broader counter-culture movements that use it. It is explained within the book without requiring prior knowledge.
Does James Montague’s self-narration work for an audience that may not know his journalism?
Yes. His voice carries the credibility of someone who was genuinely inside the situations he describes, which is more valuable here than polished professional narration. His matter-of-fact delivery when describing moments of personal risk is particularly effective.
How much background knowledge about global football is needed to follow the book?
Basic familiarity with how football clubs relate to their cities and fan bases is helpful. The Balkans sections benefit from some historical context about the 1990s Yugoslav wars, though Montague provides enough context to follow the narrative without specialist knowledge.
Is the political range of the ultra movement fully represented, or does the book focus on one end of the spectrum?
Montague deliberately covers both far-left and far-right ultra groups, as well as groups primarily defined by opposition to commercialization. The book’s argument is that the movement cannot be understood by focusing on one political tendency.
