Soccer fans' fascistic violence a "fringe phenomenon"??!? LOL!
As George put it, soccer might indeed be a fringe sport in the U.S. but hooliganism certainly is not a mere marginal by-product.... Now, almost every 1st League match requires the mobilization of HUNDREDS of anti-insurgency police squads --fully equipped with helicopters, cavalry, dogs, even surveillance balloons!
Going to a soccer match is no longer a picnic-like family event where a responsible father can bring along his kids and his wife --it's rather a stormtrooper's survival exercise, and you'd better be fit to sign up! And racist shoutings towards colored players is the new name of the (fans') game across Europe. Besides, George is wrong when he claims that most hooligans are idle hoodlums who have no other exit from their boring lifes than the weekly soccer game: a German study showed that most hooligans are allegedly "honorable" blue/white-collars. Here's a reminder:
washingtonpost.com
Excerpt:
Many Americans find the depth of passion for soccer in other countries hard to believe. But this is not about the love of the game. This is about the hate attached to it. There is no explanation other than ignorance, often combined with drunkenness and drugs, for the behavior of England's pigs, and that of smaller numbers of troublemakers from other countries, including the Netherlands and Germany. Now Tunisia joins the rabble.
The English hooligans are common criminals drawn to the World Cup because it is a massive gathering place. Their contribution, though, is to spew hate and display a pathetic futility in that their anger is aimless. An Argentine visitor to the games said today, "They are rebels without a cause."
Soccer historically has been marred by tragedies. World Cups have been relatively fortunate so far, plagued by incidents but nothing even close to such fast-moving mob violence as that which occurred at Sheffield in England in 1989, when 95 people were crushed to death by fans pushing forward into an already packed area [*]. But French people, like the Italian people in 1990, are afraid.
The English will play Romania in Toulouse Monday and Colombia June 26 in Lens. I went to Lens Sunday and the people there were joyous. Families, parents with their children, lined the streets watching the Jamaicans and the Croatians celebrating; the train station always is the main gathering place and there the largest party was held. The townspeople looked happy to have all their visitors. They smiled, they waved, they gave directions as best they could despite language barriers at every turn. It couldn't have been a finer day.
But I think of the small girl in the back seat of a stopped car who looked out at me waiting to cross a street and smiled. I wouldn't want her parents and her to come out of their home when the English hooligans come to town. If Lens doesn't shutter its town June 26, then it doesn't know anything about English hooligans. It's a postcard place of 35,000, the smallest site in World Cup history. It's in the north, convenient for the English hooligans. Why of all places would the French organizers schedule England to play there?
The French police should know what they're doing. They reportedly have prepared extensively for trouble. They have met with English authorities about hooligans. Yet foul-ups still occur. How could a French government official during a visit to England before the World Cup extend an invitation to the English to come to France even if they don't have game tickets? They could still watch the games, she said, on large television screens in the cities (although she didn't say it) like the one in Marseilles. The French government had to paint her the picture, but of course after the fact.
The United States was spared the English hooligans during the 1994 World Cup because England did not qualify.[...]
___________________
[*] Actually hooliganism's inaugural milestone belongs to Belgium's Liverpool vs. Juventus match in the Heysel stadium in 1985:
Remembering the day that shamed soccer
LONDON (AP) -- It always will be remembered as the day that shamed soccer.
Ten years after 39 people were crushed to death at Heysel stadium during a riot at the European Champions Cup final at Brussels, the lessons of May 29, 1985, are still being learned. [...]
anfield.merseyworld.com
Now, the U.K. authorities maintain a Hooligans CrimeStop Hotline:
wypolice.gov.uk |
