Big Story
Every time crowd trouble breaks out involving an English team as it did this week when Manchester United fans visited Barnsley in the Carling Cup, we get the “return to the dark ages” pieces that suggest these are nostalgic occasions akin to 70s night at your local disco.

Oliver Kay has an interesting piece in The Times on it that pinpoints when and where this trouble is tending to break out — rather than seeing them as random accidents in the time-space continuum — pointing out that there is a particular trend towards trouble on away days for big clubs in smaller towns in the Carling Cup as “the competition is, by virtue of low ticket prices and a reduced uptake from the more established support, accessible to troublemakers.”

Kay says that Manchester United fans as a whole are, as seen at Old Trafford, amongst the best-behaved in the country; but that on away days, “United fans behave differently” and that they lead the nation in arrests (though he fails to point out it’s highly likely more of them travel than for any other club).

Thousands of them travelled to Barnsley this Tuesday, and Kay makes it clear policing was not at its best, reporting that police “reacted hysterically by trying to confiscate a banner that stated “United>England” and that they acted “hostilely. . .herding them to a “compound” nearby before the match”.

Kay asks if heavy-handed policing is really the answer, whilst not letting United supporters off the hook for their own culpability as multiple arrests were made and with thousands of pounds of property damage. The club themselves branded the trouble-makers as “thugs”, and the authorities ought to rethink how they handle these away days. Though I have to say it was amusing to read this account of the trouble: “The fans jumped over the counter and in one case kicked the door in, and started attacking the staff with tomato sauce.”

Not exactly the ICF, are they?

Worldwide News

• The MLS playoffs get underway today, and there’s plenty of deserved praise for the Seattle Sounders ahead of their match-up with the Houston Dynamo tonight, though Grahame Jones in the LA Times is rather generous in this eulogising piece: “One more victory would have given Seattle the best mark in MLS.”, he writes, ignoring that Columbus took their foot off the gas as they had that sewn up even before their final game (a defeat) against New England. He also says Seattle have “Created several new MLS traditions”, but only provides Drew Carey’s marching band as an example, a tradition they can keep in Seattle. Seattle have done great, but lets remember they’ll need to win the league to match the best ever expansion performance –the Chicago Fire’s double in 1998. You just knew I had to mention that, didn’t you?
• As Rangers’ crisis deepens, supporters’ groups are threatening to boycott Lloyds bank, who in many ways now essentially control the club.
• It looks as if the end-game has been reached in America’s lower-league power struggle, with the two Canadian teams who contested the USL-1 final just earlier this month set to leave the league.
• Google Maps has launched in South Africa, just in time for you to plan your trip to World Cup 2010.
• FIFA are investigating Diego Maradona’s remarkable press conference tirade following Argentina’s qualification to the World Cup, with his lawyer defending his behaviour because of his “state of violent emotion”. This sounds like an excuse we should all start using.
• John Duerden at Goal previews the Asian Champions League final, flying as ever under my radar, unfortunately.
• Wait, Phil Brown still has a job?

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

The tessera del tifoso is the brainchild of the Osservatorio Nazionale sulle Manifestazioni Sportive (ONMS), the department of the Ministry of the Interior which is responsible for security & public order at sports events. The final proposal was approved in April 2008, and is yet to be fully implemented, but current Minister of the Interior and Lega Nord charmer Roberto Maroni is extremely enthusiastic. In fact he is endeavouring to turn what was initially supposed to be a voluntary scheme into a compulsory one, in the belief that this will effectively stamp out football violence. It is due to be imposed not only in Serie A & B but also, potentially, in the Lega Pro 1 & 2 (the old Serie C1 & C2) – where average gates rarely get above 2000.

The main idea is simple: in order to buy match tickets you will need to present your tessera del tifoso, an electronic ID card which contains all your personal details (name, date of birth address, identity document number). It is issued directly by the club, so your Milan card will allow you to buy Milan tickets only, and so on; this way there is no chance that fans of one club can buy tickets for another. To be more precise, it guarantees that away fans can’t circumvent a ban by buying “home” tickets.

Obviously fans with a banning order (DASPO, they are called in Italy) in place won’t be issued with the all important card. The equation is simple, apparently: fans subject to DASPO = violent hooligans, so football + tessera del tifoso = a peaceful paradise. The ONMS website suggests that any DASPO or “stadium-related offence” in the last five years will not be allowed into the scheme, while many other sources have suggested that ANY penal precedents will prevent the issuance of the card. In other words, convictions never expire, meaning that a ban is for life, irrespective of the actual original sentence (banning orders range from 1-5 years, most commonly). If as a hot-headed idiot aged 18 you committed a one-off stadium offence and were unlucky enough to get caught (unlucky in the sense that many people get away with all sorts of offences all the time), then you can forget about taking your kids to a match twenty years later. This may or may not be constitutional.

Apparently, the system should simplify the process of buying tickets and of entering the stadium through the creation of dedicated turnstiles, along with (potentially) the concession of privileges and/or benefits to card holders on the part of participating clubs. It’s also possible that there will be no restrictions applied to the sale of tickets for card holders (i.e. on those occasions when away tickets are not on general sale under ONMS safety measures). Indeed the head of the Lega Pro claims that the tessera “will increase overall attendance figures” since no more matches will have to be played behind closed doors, a fine example of spurious reasoning. The overall aim is apparently ‘to reward virtuous behaviour of fans’ through ‘a process of customer loyalty building through the creation of a new profile for fans, as “representatives” of their Clubs, and a reinforced sense of belonging to a “privileged community” of “official supporters”.’

There are a number of potential practical problems with the scheme: what if you are an occasional fan or if you just happen to fancy going to a game one weekend, do you have to go and apply for a card which can’t be issued til the local police approve it? What if you like to regularly go and watch more than one team? How is the scheme to be effectively administered? The idea is even more impractical at lower levels, since the expense for clubs will be not inconsiderable and the necessary infrastructure (in terms of electronic turnstiles) is often absent.

As a plan to defeat violence, the tessera del tifoso ignores the single most important feature of all contemporary hooliganism: it doesn’t take place inside the ground. Not since the 80s – and maybe even before that – has football violence in Italy taken place primarily inside stadiums. When it happens, it takes place in areas around the ground, around train stations and (above all) at motorway service stations. Stopping hooligans going into the game will do nothing to stop hooliganism for the simple fact that the game is separate from the violence – indeed some of them don’t even try to go to the game at all.

So, it’s impractical and won’t meet its purported objective. It’s also profoundly objectionable in terms of civil rights: what other group of people are collected onto a police index in order to pursue a leisure activity?  Are they going to draw up a police-approved register of people permitted to enter nightclubs? Because, you know, people go and get drunk and fight in and outside nightclubs every weekend?  It’s massively unpopular with ultras across the country and with many ordinary fans as well. Protests have been many and vigorous, and later in the month a major national ultras’ meeting is planned to demonstrate against the plan.

Above all many people are troubled about the language in which the project is couched and the supposed advantages listed above: the scheme ‘follows the logic of customer loyalty schemes’ in the words of the ONMS. It can include a Visa or Maestro feature, it can act as a points-collecting card to earn fans discounts or prizes, it in every way conceives of the fan as primarily a customer to be “fidelizzato” or incentivised to display (financial) loyalty.

This year Milan (curiously supportive as a club of this government initiative) have been running the scheme as a trial: the “Cuore Rossonero” card offers a rechargeable Maestro payment facility, earns you “Star Points” which prove how loyal you are and earn special offers, and also allows you to collect points towards rewards like a tasteful key-ring or, a black and red hand-wash dispenser. If you collect enough points you could earn discounts on tickets, a day at the training ground or even dinner with the team. And points can be collected with specially selected commercial partners, so while you are buying petrol or trainers you are saving up for an exclusive branded cup and saucer set! Be still my beating heart.

It’s pretty easy to see the potentially vast economic incentives for clubs, and equally that the system will be able to effectively penalise those which don’t chose to sign up (if, for instance, only clubs with the tessera are allowed to sell tickets to certain high-risk matches). Meanwhile Hellas fans at a service station were recently assaulted by a group of over 70 hooligans returning from watching…. yes, Milan.  Good to see the fruits of the scheme in action. It’s pretty hard not to be cynical: is this really about public order or an exercise in state control dressed up in crude commercialization? Just what football needs.

Read more from Vanda Wilcox at her blog, Spangly Princess

Photo credits: Vanda Wilcox; AS Roma Ultras

Seing Nazi symbols inside Polish stadiums always scares me. Why would anyone in Poland praise the people who, if succeeded, would gladly wipe the country and it’s people out? My first-hand experience is that this is very uncommon, although I can’t deny the problem exists.

During my five years on Wisla Krakow’s fanatic terraces, I’ve twice heard such disgraceful chants sung by a couple of isolated individuals. One is “Our role model is Rudolf Hess” and another “We have a hero — Adolf Hitler”, which sadly rhyme in Polish, making it even more grotesque. I did not hear these during games, but somewhere near the stadium. That would be it for any nazi connections. I’ve also seen a few photos in the press showing small banners with similar content, mostly during lower division games, where security is far from perfect and clubs are happy if anyone comes to the stadium at all.

Racism in general is, unfortunately, more common. Throwing bananas onto the pitch still happens occasionally — I recall a few cases during the last decade. Monkey chants also happen from time to time. These are, of course, deeply deplorable acts and need to be eradicated. The question, though, is whether racism is as wildly prevalent in Polish football as the BBC report ended up concluding, with the studio panel suggesting 20% of fans are racist.

Legia Warsaw

The central evidence related to racism in Bose’s report came from Legia Warsaw. The club’s chairman stated that 15-20% of Legia fans were racists, a remarkable figure if true. What you might not know is that Legia’s board are in deep conflict with the supporters’ association and the ultras group. Their war dates back to the Vilnius pitch invasion in 2007, which was also reported on Pitch Invasion. After this crucial game, Legia started banning fans from the stadium. Among 21 bans given directly after the disorder, only 14 were to those who took part in it. Others, as the club informed supporters, were given to people who “had been notoriously violating the stadium regulations”. These were to Legia’s ultras group “Nieznani Sprawcy” (Unknown Perps) responsible for flares and flags inside the stadium: nothing to do with racism. Some of their displays have also been shown here on Pitch Invasion previously.

This is the reason why the fans were protesting at the game shown on the report, and since they’re doing surprisingly well — managing to have most football fans nationwide on their side even some media support — it’s very convenient for the Legia chairman to paint them as racists en masse. But there was little evidence produced to support this assertion.

After the BBC report, the Polish newspaper Super Express accused Legia’s authorities of having no proof for their allegations, as did another of Poland’s biggest newspapers, Dziennik, which expressed doubts that the Legia chairman knew what he was talking about. Supporters have seen little evidence that Legia are really interested in tackling the problem.

The studio discussion after Bose’s report also blurred the issue. Scenes of chanting in the stadium, led by a capo, were portrayed as shocking. Yet this was not racist chanting. Players claim they love it when the stadium roars and almost 6,000 fans from “Żyleta” (“Razor Blade”- the terrace mentioned in the report as one not to go to) chant in unison. In the video shown, there are no Nazi/fascist/racist chants and, according to Super Express, Legia fans cannot recall last time when anything like that took place. It seems the BBC studio panel mistook a capo leading chants — something seen around the world in many leagues including MLS, but not in England — for some kind of fascist movement.

On the one hand it’s rather sad that the reporter only listened to the club chairman’s side of the story. On the other hand, it’s hard to blame him for only hearing one side. Supporters do not have much sympathy for journalists, who put them under constant attack, thus making it unsurprising the ultras did not wish to meet the BBC reporter.

The Background to Football Hooliganism

The BBC report also failed to examine the connection of racism and hooliganism in football to broader societal issues. This does not excuse any remaining racism on the terraces, but the solutions to the problem goes deeper than the panel suggested. Poland is a formerly homogeneous society undergoing a considerable change in terms of diversity. This is not a problem football can solve as easily as the panel seemed to think.

When compared to England, the BBC report failed to explore the legacy of 50 years of communism. One huge obstacle this period has left in Poland is a lack of trust for public institutions. Under the communist regime, the government was the enemy and police a tool used to smother any signs of inappropriate activities. At that time, football stadia were one of the few places with a relative freedom of speech. Football violence seemed honorable when opposed to the aggression of the police. This is still the case today. The rival fans of Cracovia and Wisla have united only a few times in history — once after the Pope’s death, for common mourning, and at other times, against the police. If there is any enemy worse than most bitter football rivals for fans, it’s the police. When a football supporter is attacked or robbed, the police are still the last institution he would turn to.

This makes addressing the issue of inappropriate behavior very hard. The police are still not gaining any respect, as even the Polish Ombudsman says that abuse of authority and unprovoked violence by police officers goes on today.

The Polish football association (PZPN) isn’t doing much better. Match delegates tend to have problems in the interpretation of symbols in some flags and banners and sometimes their decisions turn regular fans against them, not just the hardcore ones.

Laws similar to those applied by Margaret Thatcher are currently being introduced, like high fines, stadium bans and 24 hour courts for hooligans. The question is, will this really help if the whole system isn’t working right?

As the report also said, there has been improvement on the terraces over the years in any case. This week, when my fellow football fan saw the report, she told me: “Oh dear, I forgot these guys exist. The reporter was pretty lucky to find one that would prove his theory.” Nowadays, racism and nazi connections are not approved by most football fans. As the Polish sociologist and fan culture expert Jerzy Dudala said, this is more about showing off than about really knowing and understanding the meaning of certain symbols. Education is certainly needed to help eradicate all remaining racist behavior, even more than indiscriminate draconian action.

Euro 2012

As they discussed Euro 2012, I wondered why the report was mixing up league football with national teams. Poland has literally two kinds of audiences. The atmosphere at Poland’s games is hard to compare with league football. Each time a big tournament comes round, the media worldwide scare half of the globe with talk of Polish hooligans and afterwards it seems like the threat had been exaggerated in the first place. Did any violence or racism erupt at Poland – Costa Rica game during the last World Cup? There was nothing unusual, and all the media covering this event praised the atmosphere created by over 30,000 Poles.

The past few years have seen huge changes in Polish football. New stadiums are rising, standards of safety and comfort at football grounds are improving and so is the behavior of football fans. A protest of Polish ultras that might have evolved into a riot a few years back was now even backed by the media and resulted in a debate over what should and shoudn’t be allowed at football grounds. Whilst more progress need to be made, scaremongering reports with little informed opinion in them do not particularly help.

Photo credits: mbozkera and barket nowicki on Flickr

These people were all educated middle-class Italians in their early forties — architects, university lecturers, lawyers. All blithely unaware of having said anything remotely unacceptable.

This episode returned to my mind as I read Martha’s very interesting post over at The Offside: Italy, and the subsequent discussion, on the issue of racism in Italian football. The racist chanting by Parma fans against their former idol Adrian Mutu earlier this month was just one of many incidents which has illustrated that despite years of hand-wringing, racism is an enduring problem in calcio.

As several readers commented, this cannot be separated from the issue of racism in Italian society, any more than violence in Italian football can be considered wholly distinctly from other forms of casual violence. The same paper which reported the (mild) stabbing of three Catania fans outside the Olimipico before kick-off against Roma this Sunday also reported that a group of five youths set upon a municipal policeman who was attempting to enforce a minor traffic law elsewhere in the city, and kicked him into a pulp.

If we want to understand why there is senseless violence among young male Roman football fans, we might also want to consider senseless violence among young male Romans more generally. Nor do I think Rome is in any way remarkable in this regard. Football doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor do football fans; and racism in Italy is sadly not limited to the world of calcio.

A Racist Society?

Italy is not a multicultural society. It is barely a multiracial society. There are no black politicians, business leaders, newsreaders. The largest ethnic minority population is Albanian, chiefly living in the south, followed by Romanian; the largest non-white group is probably Chinese, chiefly visible via ubiquitous restaurants and a huge number of “99cent” shops, selling cheap plastic tat. Immigrant populations of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis can be found in large cities working in menial jobs and playing cricket in dusty piazzas in scruffy areas on summer evenings. The black population is largely visible as vendors of pirate DVDs and fake designer handbags. Non-Caucasian adults are almost always first generation immigrants, not Italians; and they are almost always socially excluded.

Not only is Italy not a multicultural society, but it is frequently a racist one. Racist rhetoric is deployed not only by the numerous fringe neo-fascist political groups but by mainstream rightwing parties, the Lega Nord in particular. Racist and anti-Semitic graffiti is a commonplace sight — looking out of my bedroom window I can see two swastikas and a fasces spray-painted on the building opposite. Gypsies and Romanians are a regular target of racism, as well as being frequently confused with one another. Racist beatings, stabbings and murders are sadly a regular feature in the news. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is racism in Italian football: quite the contrary, it would be extraordinary were there not.

Action taken within the world of football isn’t going to radically change Italian society. But that’s not to let the footballing world off the hook, nor to say the football authorities haven’t got a role to play. After all, footballers are among the only black celebrities in Italy, a country obsessed with the antics of the celebrity world, and football is the arena in which Italians are most likely to have any sort of positive contact with people of other ethnicities. This year, punishment for racist banners and chanting has increased, as in Juve’s case after their fans called Ibrahimovic a “foul Gypsy”. But fines hit clubs not fans, and unless they make a greater effort to control their fans’ behaviour the exercise is pointless. A more effective tactic is closing grounds, or a section thereof; this was used against Inter’s Curva Nord back in October and at least directly tackles the people whose behaviour is being punished.

But the Inter incident raises another point. Pre-match announcements via the PA system and big screens remind matchgoers of the legislation against “all forms of racist or territorial discrimination.” The identification of territorial prejudice with racism is a forward-looking move in a land where regional divisions are at times virulently hostile. Napoli fans are particularly likely to be abused, with popular chants including such charming sentiments as “Neapolitan, dirty African, you are the shame of all Italy.” It was for this type of discrimination that Inter were punished, with banners suggesting the visiting Napoli fans were bringing cholera and tuberculosis with them.

But while linking territorial prejudice with more conventional racism is a laudable attempt to tackle the former, I can’t help but think that it merely serves in practice to downgrade the importance of the latter. Most Italians find the regional and territorial stuff innocuous; and the message seems to be “racism is no worse than regionalism”. Of course, the prejudices of the north against the south are borderline racist – elderly Milanese aristocratic types have informed me that “Africa begins south of Florence.” But I think the conflation of the two forms of discrimination may prove counterproductive.

Taking Action

Institutional efforts to tackle the issue are patchy and uneven. The reaction after the Zoro incident in 2005 was encouraging but all too soon it was business as usual. There is an Italian equivalent of the English Kick it Out! campaign, which indeed shares the same name: Dai un calcio al razzismo. But their website hasn’t been updated since May 2007, and I’d never heard of them before I went hunting for them. The Italian section of the FARE network (Football Against Racism in Europe) makes itself heard only intermittently.

Action is left to individual clubs – like Sampdoria whose players took to the pitch with a banner displaying an anti-racist message last year, while one of the club’s most important ultras groups organised a multi-ethnic fans’ tournament, having uncovered, implausibly, a north African supporters’ club: Maghreb Samp. Meanwhile many left-wing ultras groups, notably under the umbrella organisation Progetto Ultrà, have also organised demonstrations against racism in football.

These projects are worthwhile. But racism is a much wider issue in Italy than the world of football alone. The idea persists that racism is only a problem for those at whom it is directed: it would be good to see white Italians — and white footballers — speaking out about the issue for once. And as time passes and immigrant communities grow more integrated, the casual racism born of ignorance and unfamiliarity will diminish. Maybe, one day, a black footballer will turn out for the Azzurri: possibly Stefano Okaka, Roman-Nigerian. Then perhaps, neo-fascism and anti-Semitism won’t be flourishing in half the curve of Italy, either. But it won’t be easy, and it won’t be happening any time soon.

Photo credits: WeLcoME To mY L!Fe; maurobrock

Friday saw the culmination of a legal case that had been ongoing for exactly twenty-two months in Santa Fe, the capital city of the province of the same name in Argentina. For a change, in spite of the time taken to reach a conclusion, the final judgement just might be a step forward in the Argentine authorities’ battle against violence in the country’s stadia.

José Gastón Mendoza was convicted of the attempted murder of a fellow Colón fan during the buildup to his side’s 2-2 draw against River Plate on the 19th February, 2006, and sent down for six years. Before the match began, Mendoza, who was already wanted by police for questioning over a murder in the city days beforehand, moved through the stadium looking for a member of a rival faction of the club’s barra brava, and found him on the main terrace behind the home goal, which astonishingly was not, at that point in the afternoon, being policed by any officers.

Mendoza attacked with a blade, giving the other man cuts on his back, chest, arms and right wrist, before being apprehended –- not by any police officers as might reasonably be expected, but by his own friends, who’d seen what was going on and didn’t want him (or by extension themselves) getting into any more trouble than he was already in. They gave him a change of clothes and helped him escape for the moment, but he was eventually tracked down by the police and arrested during the second half of the match.

My initial reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see Argentine justice continue a recent trend of actually punishing the barras for the crimes they’ve committed — 2007 has also seen several senior Boca hooligans go down for a few years each for their parts in a riot against Chacarita’s barra a few years ago, and the fallout from Gonzalo Acro’s murder could yet see River’s head hooligan jailed as well. On the other, due to the match in question being televised, the court were actually able to watch the whole incident on video — the entire thing was caught by the cameras. In spite of this they’ve still taken nearly two years to come to a judgement. And that’s rather a hard situation to get excited about.

Yet something, it is clear, has been done this year to change mindsets in Argentina, however slowly, following the universally deplored violence which marred the 2006 Torneo Apertura. For this, if nothing else, we should applaud and continue to encourage the relevant authorities. But if a little of the bureaucracy and paperwork could be dispensed with, if cases with such conclusive and obvious evidence could be resolved in a few weeks rather than two years, it could be an even bigger step forward. Perhaps that’s asking too much. . .

Read more from Sam on the game on and off the pitch at Hasta El Gol Siempre’s.

Derby Day

It’s never just a game. It’s never just three points.

Grasshoppers Club Zürich are not having a great season, and it’s made all the worse when they are forced to play their home matches in the stadium of their arch rivals, FC Zürich (FCZ).

The Hardturm, home to Grasshoppers since 1929, shut its gates in September 2007 (photo from last game below) to make way for the Stadion Zürich due in 2010. In the meantime the multisports club must play its home games in FCZ’s Letzigrund, recently developed for the Euro 2008 finals.

On Sunday night over 14,000 witnessed 7th place Grasshoppers beat title-challenging FCZ 2-1, their first win in seven over the city rivals. The victory was made all the more sweet as it seems the majority of the crowd was made up of “away” fans (though of course in their own stadium). ‘Hopper fans celebrated as the infamous Südkurve could only look on and wonder why they weren’t celebrating a home victory at the Letzigrund.

Derby day in February 2007:

Tragedy

One shouldn’t be fooled by the thought of Swiss football as neutral. Political leanings aside, the Swiss national team qualified for the World Cup 2006 in an extraordinary group where everyone kept drawing – of the top four teams in the group, only one team lost a match. At the World Cup itself they went out without conceding a goal, losing on penalties in Cologne against Ukraine.

However, the club scene is anything but placid. On the final day of the 2005-6 season, FCZ were trailing league leaders FC Basel by three points. The end of season showdown at Basel’s stadium (St. Jakob Park, below) looked sure to be heading the home side’s way when a 93rd minute winner sealed the title on goal difference, sparking riots.

About 30 seconds after the final whistle had been blown, dozens of attendees of the match who supported Basel stormed the pitch. These hooligans started attacking the Zürich players and officials who tried to flee into the changing rooms. FCZ’s Romanian defender, Iulian Filipescu, was attacked numerous times. A flare was also thrown at him, fortunately narrowly missing its target.

In the aftermath of celebrations, a 29-year-old FCZ fan Roland Maag attempted to quell a dispute among his own fans in the streets. Maag was hit, knocked out and remains paralysed to this day.

It was this story that drew a friend and I to Zürich in July 2007 to watch FCZ take on Bayer Leverkusen in a benefit match for Roli Maag, who was wheeled out to the 2,700 strong crowd at the Hardturm, weeks before the doors were closed forever. An agreeably warm summer afternoon reminded all those present of the best and worst of being a football fan. Posting in an internet café that evening, I wrote on the messageboard for FCZ fans:

“…but FCZ was great, we enjoyed it, drunk beer, ate sausage and looked at the lovely girls at Lake Zürich…”

Fast forward to Sunday evening, Grasshoppers having defeated their arch rivals, a victory that will be remembered all through the three-month winter break in Switzerland.

Reading the Grasshoppers match thread on the same FCZ messageboard I wrote on months ago, I notice the signature of one of the posters. It’s the comment I made months ago:

“Originally posted by JoeW:

Aber FCZ war geil, wir haben es genossen, Bier getrunken, Wurst gegessen und die zürische Mädel am Zürichsee bermerkt.”

It’s sometimes worth remembering the effect football can have. One tourist’s throwaway comment can become a mantra for a lifelong fan. One second can turn a runner-up into a champion. One celebration can become a nightmare.

Photo credits: Dreamer7112; Nelson H.,

Some fans are pointing out that he did not help matters by firing warning shots from his gun, given the death of Italian ultra Gabriele Sandri a few weeks ago from what was reported as a policeman’s “warning shot”. Riot police then moved in on the fans, and three were arrested.

The good news to report today is that the policeman is in a stable condition in hospital. The bad news is that in my view, the words of the Serbian government sound like they could lead to more conflict and trouble.

Sports and youth minister Snezana Samardzic-Markovic told Reuters that “While educational measures are desirable, repressive action is necessary and police have no choice but to act swiftly and decisively while the justice ministry should do the same.”

Serbian football is in a state of crisis, under suspicion by UEFA for involvement in match-fixing, in conflict over the causes of the failure to qualify for Euro 2008 (the sporting director, former Juventus player Zoran Mirković, resigned last week), and on Saturday the game between Mladost and Bežanija was abandoned when the visitors’ players walked off after two of their players had been sent-off and a penalty was awarded against them. The game was abandoned.

In the comments to the previous post, the question of whether Serbia should be banned from UEFA was brought up and debated. Is that the right response? Is repressive action the answer as the government says?

As Red Star Belgrade took on Hajduk Kula in the Serbian first division, a policeman was seriously injured after fans spotted him filming them in plain clothes.

The policeman (right) fired two shots into the air after he had been hit with burning flares, his clothes setting on fire.

“The fans recognised a police officer on duty wearing plain clothes and attacked him,” police commander Borivoje Tosic told Belgrade media. “The officer sustained serious injuries from burning flares and broken seats and is receiving treatment in hospital.”

Three fans have been arrested after riot police moved in, and the officer is being treated at a military clinic. As far as I can gather, thankfully his life is not in danger.

More photos after the jump. Warning: they show the events graphically.

Meanwhile, in Greece, the game between AEK Athens and Aris in Thessaloniki was held-up for 85 minutes after a flare thrown from the crowd nearly hit AEK’s Traianos Dellas. The referee ordered the AEK fans to leave the stadium, their reluctance leading to the delay.

Bizarrely, it was only weeks ago that trouble had erupted when Red Star visited Aris in the UEFA Cup.

The players of both teams, as well as the referees, ran toward the field entrance located behind one of the goals — in the section where the disturbances are taking place. They’re running under heavy guard by the riot cops.

As I was writing that previous sentence, another unit of riot police charged through the section where most of the disturbances were taking place, and they seem to have taken control. You can see images of injured police officers being carried away, and of innocent fans, many holding small children, looking on in amazement and horror.

The situation seems to be out of control. I’m listening to the Spanish-language commentator on Gol TV right now (it’s the Costa Rican feed actually), and it seems that Alajuelense’s barras only arrived at the match during the second half, and they devoted their time to making chants and threats against the directors of the club.

Video of the game is below; the crowd trouble is shown from 7:00 into the video onwards.

The events proved devastating for Alajuelense. Manager Carlos Restrepo and General Manage Francisco Aguilar both resigned, the club were fined US$10,000, their stadium was banned from hosting international games for six months, and Municipal were awarded a 3-0 victory.

At Italia 1990, England were stationed on the island of Sardinia, with suspicions raised that FIFA had fixed the seedings to ensure the “English disease” of hooliganism was quarantined from the Italian mainland. As Mathew Engel wrote in the Guardian at the time, “Britain is the only country which sends a government minister around telling other countries how dreadful his fellow citizens are.”

Back then, few wanted to be associated with England away. When England played Ireland in the group stages at the Sant’Elia stadium in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, the game did not even sell out.

Pete Davies in All Played Out recalls that “The Italians had 7,000 police and carabinieri on Sardinia — more police than there were England fans . . . ’90 Tour had sold less than half their 3,000 packages; with the FA selling most of their allocation of 2,816, and then a few hundred buying in the street, I’d say the Irish outnumbered the English in the Sant’Elia by two to one at the very least.”

The press chased the England fans around, stirring trouble in true tabloid sensationalist style, while broadsheet Establishment newspapers such as the Telegraph tutted their disapproval. Davies, again, referring to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico: “There was a story going round in Monterrey, there was a man from The Sun going round with a brick tied up in a note that said the brick was from England. And he’d go into bars offering fans a couple of hundred quids’ worth of pesos to put it through a shop window.”

Compare that to Germany 2006, as Denis Campbell in the Guardian noted:

On the pitch in Germany a woefully under-performing England lost respect, credibility and yet another quarter-final. Off it, though, their huge army of followers put forward a serious pitch for the unofficial title of Fans of the Tournament. ‘We’ve got the best fans in the world’, declared the Sun the Monday after England’s defeat on penalties to Portugal. The Daily Telegraph, of all people, picked up the same theme. ‘At least England’s fans played a blinder’, ran its headline. And World Cup spokesman Gerd Graus was in no doubt that ‘The English fans are the world champions of partying. They created a great atmosphere; they have a fan culture unique in the world.’ Amid such a huge number of England supporters in Germany – 100,000 were reckoned to be in Gelsenkirchen to watch David Beckham and his team-mates complete their hat-trick of last eight failures – the few arrests among them were ‘statistically irrelevant’, said Graus.

English fans are not now suddenly all sipping tea and eating scones on their travels. Disorder still follows England around (Marseilles 1998, Charleroi 2000, Stuttgart 2006), though English supporters are now often the victims instead of being the aggressors.

But the sheer numbers and vast consumption activities sees host nations drooling at the revenue England brings, rather than fearing the havoc their fans will wreak.

Yesterday, the presidents of both the Swiss and Austrian expressed their distress at England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008. The latter lamented that “It is the only teardrop for us right now. It is the only thing I regret, and I regret it very strongly indeed that England will not be involved.” 150,000-200,000 England fans had been expected to descend on the continent next summer, and the Russians won’t bring as much spending power instead.

And South Africa are apparently already concerned about the prospective economic impact on their tournament in 2010 should England continue their lamentable form.

As the Guardian reports,

Concern for England’s welfare assumes a range of forms. Danny Jordaan, chief executive officer for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, is mindful of the economic harm if the slump continues.

“England is very important to the World Cup,” he said. “If you look at Germany [2006], England sold 80,000 tickets. At one stage England had more than 100,000 fans there. They are very important for the ambience and the atmosphere, and in Germany they brought an additional element – that of the wags.”

England might not bring much in terms of flowing football to the world arena any longer, but the world should hope we qualify for 2010 so that Cheryl Tweedy and Coleen McLoughlin and maybe even Victoria Beckham, in one last brave consumptive hurrah, will have the chance to give a dramatic boost to a developing economy with one of their legendary spending sprees.