Pitch Invasion

Not content with creating perhaps the world’s largest lightshow, Fenerbahce fans rain down the confetti.

The Bad Blue Boys of the Croatian team Dinamo Zagreb are rather infamous in European ultras circles, and will be the subject of several posts on pitchinvasion.net in the coming weeks. After all, how many supporter groups can claim to have been part of the start of a war? For the Bad Blue [...]

It’s the first pitchinvasion.net battle of the Polish ultras! After we posted this video of Lech Poznan’s ultras yesterday, commenter BoB asserted they were nothing compared to those of Legia Warsaw. So who’s better? You decide (I’m certainly not - Chicago has a very large and avid Polish soccer community, after all).

We’ve looked at a couple of differing sides of Polish supporters recently in photos, but this video shows the full range of their lightshow antics in full. Let’s hope some of this atmosphere shows up in EURO 2012. Warning: not for those allergic to strobe lighting.

Cricket’s Barmy Army and City Gents? Football fans moronic singing about German bombers? I’m not sure either set of England fans - football or cricket - distinguish themselves particularly.

The Bundesliga as idyllic soccer fan heaven is probably an over-covered angle by now: cheap stands, big crowds, good beer, etc. etc. But it’s worth wondering if Germany isn’t a bad model for MLS: inexpensive and wild enough to please the fans, well-attended and orderly enough (maybe too much for a lot of current [...]

Lazio’s ultras, Irriducibili (Unmovables), are known for their extreme right-wing views and the imprisonment of their leaders last year. This was the culmination of serious failures by the club to deal with the disturbing behaviour of their hardcore fans. As Rob Hughes explained as far back as 2001:
The ultra-extremists of Lazio, calling themselves [...]

The post-game jersey trade is a tradition with which every soccer fan is familiar. Unless you’re a reporter for Fox Soccer Channel. No purpose here other than to point out some priceless comedy, but the clip does make a point: if this is what happens at one of the few soccer-concentrated media outlets [...]

The power and resilience of ultras culture today in Europe is interestingly demonstrated by one of the smaller continental team’s fans: the Atalanta ultras. Despite the relative anonymity of their team in Italy, they are renowned for their passion and organisation, as can be seen in this video.

Below the fold, more on the Atalanta ultras.