MOSCOW — Holding on to the ankles of two of his opponents, Alex, a 33-year-old member of a Moscow soccer hooligan group, felt the blows on his head but wouldn’t let go. The third man on top of him was battering his skull with both fists, but still Alex held on, hoping to buy his teammates, battling around him, breathing space. At last, the man rammed his elbow down into Alex’s face, shattering his eye socket. He let go.

This was not his first fight; years of organized brawls have left Alex with a face reshaped by blows. (Surgery and a plastic implant stabilized his eye after this most recent one.) And that last fight, nearly a year ago, had been a good one, Alex said in a recent interview. His side had won.

What had unnerved him was a new feeling: He realized it was getting harder to keep up.

When it first appeared in the 1990s, hooliganism in Russian soccer modeled itself heavily on the English version, adopting its clothes and terminology, including the term for its groups: firms. The Russians also embraced the English’s passion for blackout drinking and drunken brawling.

“The English were our school,” said Yevgeny Malinkin, a fan in his 40s known as Kril. “Now we’ve lost our fathers. We’ve overtaken them.”