can it ever be a reality in england?

Whatever, I only live here, attend games and witness it first hand. There is no crowd trouble at Old Trafford or pretty much any other Premier league ground these days and foreign fans get treated well.
It doesn't mean there will never be another incident or that there won't ever be isolated cases of individuals being idiots but the hooligan problem was a seventies phenomena and was pretty much eradicated by the mid 90's.
National games attract more idiots but that is true of every other country.
Like I said when the Euro's were here and matches were played at Old Trafford there was carnival atmosphere outside the ground with rival fans and locals having pictures taken together.
I was there and I'm not a liar so cease and desist with your unfounded slurs.

 

i didn't refer to incidents you must have seen, nor does your personal experience exhaust the field.
the reports i have heard came from people i have no reason to mistrust. i did not mention 'crowd trouble,' but single incidents. the equivalent, let's say, of you traveling to rome or madrid and finding some loud thugs on the bus you're riding to the game. you really have so much trouble believing it?

 

I've had at least one dodgy comment from Johnny foreigner on every holiday I've been on even where the majority were extremely friendly - it didn't give me a negative view of the people.
I read worse comments about the UK or the EPL and it's fans every other day on BS but I don't assume all MLS fans ignorant. So no, if it was just some random guy being an idiot I don't find it that hard to believe.

I can't dismiss your bus story, I don't know the context, but I know for a fact that if someone shouted xenophobic, racist or abusive remarks on a public transport bus they would get a lot of very blank stares and probably a few comments along the line of "Shut up you dick-head"

Man Utd had the worse arrest record last season with 63 in total relating to any from of violence.
When you consider they have crowds of 70,000+ on game days, and contrary to what you have been told a very zealous police force, that is not a high number and none of the incidents involved serious injury.
What are the figures for a NFL stadium such as MetLife?

Edit.

I was just having a quick browse to reminisce those 96 finals and found I had totally disassociated the memory of the bombing that took place in Manchester the day before the first game here from the actual finals - the largest explosion in the UK since the second world war destroying a whole swathe of the city centre.

 

To the OP, our rivalries are there to be felt yet often many hundreds of miles away. In gridiron and our pro soccer both.
However, to be sure, if we take our NFL as an example, had England for territorial space and had Cowboys, Eagles, Texans, Raiders and Browns fans all within a cheap train ride away from each other to then play home and away year after year. It would be a clusterfvck of epic proportions. Body parts as trophies type of shit.
Again, our nation is too expansive and this quelled the chance for hooliganism proper to take hold decades ago.
It should be noted for y'all overseas that Mexico and their MFL is the only old soccer playing nation I know of that had big pro soccer rivalries but very little hooliganism problems. Their fans set around each other for decades, really until very recently turning in line with the rest of the Americas south of them in the hemisphere which can be easily equal to Poland or Turkey clashes over its football culture. Soccer and its fans got lucky in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. it appears. All the rivalries, rare recurring violence.

 

I think a big part of the reason American fan culture is relatively peaceful is because we don't have the hard sectarian distinctions in team support. Whether you're a Yankees or Mets fan might come down to where you live in the NY area, but there aren't any real ethnic or religious lines separating the two fanbases. That's less likely to cause problems than a Celtic/Rangers situation.

Interestingly, there is some history of soccer teams in the US and Canada being organized by certain ethnic groups. However, that never really caught on with the big 4 sports or MLS. American team owners are in the business of attracting as large a fanbase as popular. Even in cities like Boston or New York, where there were some ethnic and religious lines in the past, the sports teams were marketed to the city as a whole, rather than the Irish team or the Catholic team.

 

you just did try to dismiss my account with your 'fact.' i told you a couple of things that happened. but i guess your hypothetical universal 'facts' count for more.
pbl you're just thinking of noon on a weekday in the downtown.

 

Imagine New York City having 10 teams. Now imagine the racial atmosphere in the late 1980s, and imagine Harlem FC playing a team representing a white working class area. Imagine a team representing the rich area of Manhattan playing any other NYC team after the financial collapse.

I think puttputt hits the main point. In most of Europe, rivalries aren't just between two geographic regions, the big ones are between two cultures...Rangers-Celtic, Barca-Real Madrid. Sure, people in Philly have Philly pride and that comes into play when the Eagles play the Giants, but it's nothing like different religions or being on different sides of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco's dictatorship.

 

My two cents, the nfl is a better comparison because of the crowd size as well as the level of passion. nfl teams though do not have supporter groups or clubs that travel in packs, and pack mentality can lead to more violence. fights are a semi-common occurence at nfl games, but it usually involves individuals and is easily controlled.

 

Someone else mentioned Seattle v Portland as the domestic soccer rivalry "most likely to cause violence", which is perhaps true (and since both sides actively work to avoid problems, this is a relative good thing).

However, the *only* thing that creates this rivalry is proximity, as far as I can tell. I have lived in both Portland (or Oregon anyway) and Seattle, and Politically, Ethnically, Sectarianly, and any other demographic you might want to apply, we are the same. We love to hate each other, but when it gets down to it, about the only difference we have with each other is civic pride.

 

Agreed, I think you guys in Portland are a little more hippy then us, but I think your probably right.

 

Not sure if anyone has stated a possible ignorant but obvious possibility, that as sports fans, we are just better. More inteligent, level-headed, intense but with a sense of sportsmanship or respect for fellow man, this a possibility?

 

Respect for fellow man, yes. Level-headed? Obviously you are new to BS and haven't experienced the roller coaster ride of emotions that occur during the season. The meltdowns over one loss are mind boggling. I'd say sports fans are anything but level headed when it comes to supporting your team.

 

no, no , no, I'm not new to that trust me, live and die with a few teams for over 20 years now. I wasnt trying to state fact, brought it up as a possibility. Sounders last second loss to San Jose on sat brought me to my knees, what a freakin heartbreaker, Seattle sports fans in general experience more heartache then any other city though. dosnt give me urges to incite riots

 

I agree with you, I was just making a joke. And I think just about every city, sans LA, experience the same amount of heartbreak. Watching RSL lose in the CCL final last year was gut wrenching. The Jazz losing back to back championships to the Bulls was pretty bad. But I think fans in Cleveland have it the worst. When's the last time they won anything?

 

I think it's because most members of MLS supporter groups are middle-class and upper-middle class yuppies and hipsters.
When you do see a more working-class attendance, which you can see in Chicago when foreign teams play, the fans tend to be younger and quicker to violence.
Don't believe me? Just go to the next Mexico vs Poland game in Chicago and tell me how many drunken fights happen.

 

Just curious, does La Liga rewards teams based on "audience behavior"? I think it's part of fair play award. If so, why is it not implemented in PL/Bundesliga/Serie A?

 

And NFL tickets are pretty damn expensive. That tends to weed out a lot of the more troublesome elements of any fanbase. I think the reduction in fan violence in Europe is due to a similar dynamic. As teams there have upgraded their stadiums, ticket prices have increased, which has ended up replacing the working class fans with wealthier patrons.

 

Naw, American sports fans, on an individual level, are not better people than our European cousins. There are plenty of drunken morons at any sporting event in the US. But, as someone said upthread, those morons tend to be isolated, rather than joining some "Firm" or other group of subhuman troglodytes.

Our fan culture has developed in a different direction than in many European countries. That's due to a lot of different factors, including geography, lack of ethnic/sectarian based teams and the fact that American team owners have historically run their clubs in a more professional manner. The end result of all this is that when you think of American sports fans, you think of the tailgate, whereas when you think of European sports fans, you think of soccer riots. Granted, neither stereotype is completely accurate. But, it says something about a fan culture that a peaceful cookout is the norm as opposed to drunken fools bashing each other with beer bottles.

 

There are alot of differences in our respected sporting culture. Two things that are rarities over here that are more common around the world are violence and racism. Those are things that make big waves when they happen here bc they're so rare.

I think that what helps is our security is taken very seriously over here, the media is usually very responsible about reporting incidents and condemning the violators, and our leagues themselves have real consequences for offending fangroups; which in turn encourages them to police themselves. An example of the latter is the MLS Cup Final in which the traveling supporters of the Houston Dynamo were cited for throwing objects on the field and were banned from bringing drums and flags to the first 8 or so away games of this current season. So MLS can use these "privileges" as a carrot to encourage good behavior.

But in general, American society likes to see itself as upholding the best values and most Americans don't like, at least publicly, to be seen as behaving badly. So ppl who can afford leisure activities such attending sporting events, will generally avoid activities of violence or intolerant behavior because it reflects on their image as American sportsfans. You're more likely to see such things in a collegiate sports atmosphere which greatly resembles a European sporting crowd. You have younger sportsfans from a more homogenous region of the country who share similar backgrounds and so will generally be more uninhibited than fans of professional sports. Now bc MLS generally blends these two disparate types of sportsfans in their gameday atmosphere, the different FO's are vigilant in trying to both utilize the energy of this college-type sportsfan, while not offending the sensibilities of the more typical pro-sportsfan set. It's a delicate balancing act.

So, in the end, the very act of granting fan privileges serve a double purpose to the league. First they enable the league to create an atmosphere that's unlike and superior to any other pro sports league. At the same time those very privileges allow MLS a carrot that can be taken away in order to entice these groups to keep themselves in line. With that trust in place, we can get the best of both worlds in both an exciting and entertaining spectacle without the risk inherent in other countries or even our own collegiate atmospheres.

 

thats why all the Euro talent should bring there ability to the States , better fans

 

in america assault charge is huge on your record. harming a cop is life in prison. in europe (where I have lived 20 years) these crimes are punished lightly and sporadically.

to me the fact that in america laws are actually enforced and the punishments are severe, life-altering is a huge deterrent for those types that wish to bring violence to the game.