The fight against modern Soccer(football) 2

The travel thing doesn't make sense. English people tell me it is cheaper to go to Florida in the USA than it is to go to Euro Disney. Maybe that was before the Chunnel.

If you think about it, the exchange rate has always been more favorable for Europeans and British. I know a gal from London who stocks up on electronics whenever she comes to the states.

In terms of people not interested in going to games - you can keep them. Even though I would be willing to bet many people went to stadiums without tickets.

Regarding New York's finest or Los Angeles finest accompanied by other security forces. No doubt they would be more than up to the task.

Thankfully you are right, they weren't needed. For the hooligans sake that is.

 

You need to be grateful to what is known as The greatest Generation of Americans ever. They won that war.

 

So leave the Red Star and Partizan fans to their own devices? OK. Next Red Star/Partizan game no police. Let me know how that works out for you.

 

Like I said the type of people you are talking about. We don't want in America under any circumstances.

However, the police and security forces would be more than up to the challenge, trust me.

 

or just maybe they mean that euro disney itself is expensive.

There's no way in the world getting to the USA is cheaper than going from England, although train fares can be quite a lot.


The extra numbers travelling in 2006 were a factor of three things. Cost is one. Ease of travel is another, with there being some many ways for people in Europe to get into Germany.

One massively big factor is the ease of booking up travel in 2006. Booking up on the internet was a piece of cake, as was applying for tickets.

For 1994 things were very different. You had to deal with travel agents, and travel agents are pretty hopeless when it comes to bespoke travel arrangements. There also were FIFA websites where you could apply for tickets. You had to either apply for a ticket in the official allocation or just go over without a ticket and hope you could get one on the day. While that's not too much of a problem if you are going somewhere like France or Spain, it'd be much more of an undertaking if crossing the Atlantic.

 

You seem to be under the impression that people who go without tickets are doing so to cause trouble.

That isn't really the case. Many go in the hope of picking up a ticket, but otherwise are willing to just enjoy the atmosphere of the tournament cities if they can't get one.

 

Fans like that will do whatever they can get away with. Serbian fan culture is notoriously toxic and screwed up. Until and unless Serbian police are able and willing to use overwhelming force on hooligans and inflict some serious legal consequences on them for their actions, the toxic culture will remain.

One of the reasons we don't really have a hooligan culture here in the US is because the legal consequences of engaging in such behavior can be severe. For example, anyone organizing and running violent European-style firms would very quickly find themselves facing some very serious criminal conspiracy charges that would result in multi-year prison sentences.

 

The English experience tends to show that "overwhelming force" is an incredibly negative tactic that succeeds in doing nothing but antagonise fans.

The "baton charge" is a sign of a police force who have lost control.

Many police forces across Europe seem to be where England was in the early 80s, thinking about nothing beyond containment and cracking a few heads now and then.

 

So vifvaf, why not make the punishment as severe in Europe?

First paragraph, that is how the Red Star/Partizan fans are stupid.

 

I wasn't antagonized by the overwhelming force shown last August when I was in London and went to two matches. You are only antagonized by it if you allow yourself to be.

I welcomed the sight of a strong police presence.

 

That's because the police didn't use overwhelming force, or any real force at all.

They didn't frogmarch you down a narrow footpath to the stadium, cram you into an away end too small for the number of fans entering, and whack you over the head if you complained.

They didn't form a cordon inside the ground, blocking your view, and practically invite you to try and have a go at them if you dared.


They've also learned that rather trying to arrest offenders at the time, it's much better to capture their actions on CCTV and arrest them later.

Policing now is so different to how it used to be, yet I've been to games abroad and seen them still adopting the old "contain or charge" tactics that fail so dismally.


Crucially there was also a change in fan attitudes after Heysel. Hooligans got marginalised to a large extent, as people stopped seeing violence as part of the game and saw it as something that needs to be removed. I do get the impression that many in certain parts of Europe still view crowd violence as just club passion taken to excess. In reality the two don't go together at all. You can lose the troublemakers without losing passion. It was only many years later, when crowds in England became predominantly middle-aged, that the passion dropped.

 

You said people will act like they are treated. Well, treat them like adults, hopefully they act like adults.

 

We already have a culture of devoted and passionate fans that is on the same level as anywhere in Europe. The only part of European fan culture that hasn't come across the pond is the violence, which is a good thing.

I think anyone trying to organize European-style sports violence here would find themselves facing decades-long prison sentences for criminal racketeering, conspiracy and maybe even terrorism.

 

This shows me that you don't really know anything about the history of Serbian supporter groups. Their violence has nothing to do with the police.

We're talking about sports violence specifically, not violent crime in general. Sports violence in the US, especially of the organized type, is incredibly rare (though it does happen on this continent, as the idiots in Vancouver showed last year when their hockey team lost the Stanley Cup final).

Our sporting events are generally quite peaceful and violence-free. We don't need to segregate visiting and home fans, except for a few places (like Philly and Oakland) where the locals can charitably be described as sub-human trolls. We don't really need Europeans chiming in on how best to keep the peace at sporting events- all the evidence shows that we're better at it than you all.

 

then again, it's hard to make a case for the US best at keeping the peace when there's little prospect of there being anything except peace at events.


Watching Chelsea v Napoli tonight, and the Chelsea and Napoli fans are separated by just a line of stewards (not police).

I can't say I remember the arrangements in Napoli for the first leg, but I'd be surprised if segregation wasn't large blocks of empty seats and riot police.

 

The violence has a lot to do with the Serbian supporter groups' political connections to various factions in Serbian society, including connections to some scary ultranationalist and other radical groups. A lot of it can be traced to the Yugoslavian civil war, as well as divisions in society during the communist era. There is also involvement of organized crime in the ownership of many Serbian soccer clubs, and the supporter groups are often a front for such crime groups.

The soccer violence in Serbia is in no way connected to police excesses against fans. The police are barely able to keep the violence in check.

Serbian fan culture is the essence of pre-modern soccer. It is what so many Western European soccer clubs have worked for so long to eradicate.