Evidence gathered over several World Cups suggests a significant rise in male-to-female domestic violence in several countries during the tournament. The explanation for this rise is likely to be messy. 

Historically, football has been a vehicle of masculine gender identification and solidarity. Women and girls have tended to be excluded, marginalised or demeaned in the football world. The type of masculinity most celebrated in the culture of football is ‘hegemonic masculinity’, characterised by physical and psychological domination, an ethos of excess and the denigration of anything thought to smack of the feminine, such as emotion, moderation, abstinence, the mind, personal sensibility and male homosexuality. 

Now add high levels of alcohol consumption to this mix, and it only gets worse.