I recall one article - I think in the Economist - that suggested two factors. First, stadium design. At the professional and large-university level, assigned seating is almost universal here, with the possible exception of bleacher seats in baseball. Certainly no U.S. stadium I’ve ever heard of has those awful standing sections where people have gotten crushed, and which seem to lend themselves especially well to mob behavior.
Second, in the U.S. professional sports have long been marketed as a family activity, not just men’s leisure.
One more thought: I’m under the impression that soccer has a real class identification in Britain, and games are an expression of solidarity and resentment. Contrast baseball, the first big-time professional sport in the states, which has long marketed itself as an expression of classless, democratic ideals (this, of course, was before the invention of the corporate box). And our football was actually something of an elite sport, rough as it is - many of its rules were developed at Yale, and it was prominent mainly at the university level.
I have no cite, unless you call first hand experience credible.
Make no mistake, Brazilian foot ball games are seriously dangerous places to be. But, I would not say that it is because of any organized tradition of violence, more like - “Hey, I’m here with 5000 of my closest friends and I can do any fricken thing I want, waddia gonna DO about it!” mentality. When ever there is a big game here at the SPFC (São Paulo football Club) stadium the military shock troops are on hand, ready for a riot. I have seen groups of fans literally commander city busses, in order to get to the games. All the while the fans inside are singing, trashing the bus, throwing seats out the windows, surfing on top etc. but not exactly stopping and looting shops, picking fights or mugging old ladies along the way. I had the misfortune of being on a city bus that was passing in front of the stadium just before the start of a championship game. It was BAD. The driver couldn’t make his way through the crowd, as he inched along fans whooping it up in the street were getting pissed off that he wasn’t stopping to let people pass, a bunch of people started throwing rocks and bottles at the bus windows, then another group grabbed the side of the bus and started bouncing it as if to try and roll it over, those of us inside the bus inside were in a panic. Soon enough the cops on horses came and started thumping heads. It was real civilized! I would never go to a soccer game here. Never.
Ever.
You’re a little out of date on that one too (at least in the UK – I can’t speak for the rest of the world). By law there are no standing terraces at major sports stadiums here any more.
“Home” and “away” fans are also segregated from one another, either by assigned seating or controlled zoning.
My buddy is a huge Flyers fan. Apparantly Philladelphia has some of the worst (or best) fans in America.
He sent me a picture of a guy wearing a Penguins jersey getting the crap beat out of him in the stands of a Flyers game. He was surrounded by guys in Flyers jersey’s. The funniest thing was a guy was punching him with his left hand while holding a beer in his right hand!
My other buddy who is a huge Eagles fan said one fan threw a unborn pig featus at ref for a bad call.
Tough town.
Oh yea, anybody from Philly please let me know if these are true or false.
I’m cringing over here in Philly man, but its true. I’ll look for the cite, I know there must be an archive of the pig fetus somewhere. While those two incidents (and more) certainly won’t endear Philadelphia fans to the world I think they are more isolated incidents than representative of typical fan behavior here. Still, its definately a sports town with great teams and lots of rabid fans.
I’m talking about after/pre match violence between firms of supporters which is still fairly common, although as I stressed in the opening thread not as common as in the 80’s and not actually at matches. In fact I was in Bristol a few months ago when violence broke out between Cardiff (known as the ‘soul crew’) and the Bristol ‘supporters’ (dont know there name) after the match. And although this isn’t as common as it used to be I still think it happens regularley but is no longer the flavour of the month with the media so doesn’t get reported very often. Think about Acid House parties being all over the news in the late 80’s these still happen every weekend but just not on the same scale and its old news so the media don’t bother with it. The question is specifically about organised gangs who arrange to fight each other and dont involve other people. Also i’ve just remebered Millwall fans had a thousand person strong post match riot not all that long ago so these are the matches i’m talking about everton.
OK, that’s clear enough now, but it wasn’t clear from the OP because you didn’t indicate that you were talking about events away from the stadium. “Fairly common” is also an expression that will mean different things to different people.
I haven’t heard the pig fetus thing either, but yes, we have some rather…rabid fans. The court and jail cells in the basement of the vet are a quasi new thing - they opened them after one game got totally out of control about six years ago, IIRC. First (and last) football game I ever went to.
Also, there have been plenty of incidents at Phillies games where people have been throwing things onto the field (don’t have a specific one right off, sorry). However, we also have rabidly peaceful fans (several Phillies players have their own little fan clubs in the stands). So in our defense, we kind of balance ourselves out.