I’ve started following Premiere League and the worst incident I’ve seen this year has been a streaker. My personal sample size may be small but I was under the impression that the elimination of the terraces in favor of all-seating and a deliberate marketing effort as someplace you could take your girlfriend or kids had done much to curb the historical violence between supporters.
Having said, I’ve still noticed that there are sturdy physical barriers around the stands reserved for visiting fans. And part of the atmosphere still seems to revolve around singing derogatory songs about the other side. Which is kinda cool, that they’re all organized about it.
Took me a long time to see this one, but the current King is an Atlético cardholder. That’s the team which spends most time being “the other Madrid team” in Primera (Rayo Vallecano and Getafe also tend to pop up there, although not as much). All our teams that have Real in the name got it from JC’s great-grandfather, Alfonso XIII.
One factor which hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that much of US sporting culture based around teams representing educational institutions. (not only colleges and universities, but also high schools.) Among students you get plenty of rowdieness, but any tendancy towards violence (especially the organized kind) would be immediately stamped out by the school administration. Also, it isn’t just students who attend games. The fact that the fan base for most college teams consists largely of alumni also has a civilizing effect. Of course, the synergy between educational institituions and big time sports creates its own problems, but that is a topic for a different thread.
Of course this doesn’t apply to professional sports. But beside the facts already mentioned of high ticket prices and long distances discouraging fans of visiting teams from attending games, I would also point out that for basketball and American football, the college game became popular before professional leagues became well established, and consequently much of the culture of the college game was transferred to the professional game. It is interesting to note that baseball and hockey seem to have had somewhat more of a problem with fan violence back in the 70s, as historically there has been less synergy between the college and professional games in these sports compared to basketball and American football.
I followed my football team with my Dad to begin with… made friends with lots of other young lads similar ages to myself and it develops from there.
It doesn’t happen in the Premier League anymore. The police now have control over it and you can do jail time for it these days therefore people Arnt so up for it, as they were in pre-CCTV days.
It will happen in USA, Europeans now try to copy British ‘casuals’ under the name of ‘ultra’s’. Either the introduction of super-fast travel or ‘‘in-state leagues’’ will produce this culture for you. The fundamental idea that if 1000’s of people not from your city are drinking in your city, then organised fights are almost certain to occur.
I start going to the football about 20 years ago, but already by then hooliganism (in England anyway) was in its death throes . A few things you’d see that you pretty much never see nowadays: away fans sneaking into the home end before being bundled out by the police, someone getting their arm broken by the police baton when they tried to climb over the fence and onto the pitch, etc, etc, but there was never any serious violence between fans. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t because fans were so well behaved, but there was a big police presence (much more than there is today) at every game and the away fans’s transport and ticketing was tightly organized in conjunction with the police so there was never any chance of opposing sets of fans actually meeting (except for away fans sneaking into town as above). You still get the occasional pockets of violence, in particular Cardiff City’s fans used to cause a lot of problems when they played away, but even most of that was limited to property damage rather than personal violence.
Nowadays you just don’t see it because everyone knows that the police will come down like a ton of bricks on the merest hint of football-related violence and the security at the stadiums is quite a bit laxer than it was 20 years ago because attitudes among fans have changed. There’s a bit of a culture of young fans hankering after the days of football violence that they never knew, but most football violence in England are genuinely isolated incidents.
A big part of it is demographics. In the USA soccer is a sport of the suburban middle classes. The American equivalent of “Chavs” are not interested in soccer. There is a strong contingent at boxing and hockey matches, and those are also places where one is more likely to encounter fan violence. Even then though, it’s usually among those in adjoining or near seats, and seldom would folks take it outside the stadium.
It’s like asking why we don’t have tennis hooligans.
It happens a lot more than you think mate. Even today, Scotland is getting more hoolies all the time. Look 2013 football arrests, there are loads.
The 80’s and particularly the 70’s were a lot worse. And your wrong to think 20 years ago there were more police. A normal bobby does not try & stop 150-200(more sometimes and what team) each side from having a massive scrap, how can they and at what cost?.. That’s why it’s very small scale today, CCTV captures all now and Britain is the country with most CCTV. Football hooligans have always tended to follow codes which in essence is fist-fight only and fight other ‘casuals’.
Watch: Shrewsbury - Walsall 2012 in YouTube, that is one of the biggest fights I’ve seen in 2010+
A couple of things: in North America there is no home end or away end; everyone is mixed throughout the stadium/arena.
Although alcohol consumption can be taken to excess, it isn’t for the vast majority of fans, many of whom need to drive away after the game. I don’t know what you pay for a pint at a game in the UK, but it’s like $8 or something ridiculous here, for a light beer. It’s almost impossible to get drunk on that stuff.
Very occasionally you might hear of a couple of fans at a game getting into a scrap, but they’ll get kicked out of the game immediately.
Around here, it seems to break up by sport, not by team. In other words, if you have a bunch of Cowboys stickers on your car and are wearing conspicuous Cowboys clothing, chances are you’re some sort of Hispanic person. If you’re wearing Mavs stuff, you’re probably black, and if you’re wearing Rangers stuff, you’re probably white or hispanic. FC Dallas stuff is pretty much wealthy white suburban people’s province these days, and if you’re wearing Stars gear, you’re probably some white d-bag type trying to show you’re cool by showing that you follow hockey, not football.
College sports are kind of hit or miss; if you’re wearing UT gear, you could be anything. Texas A&M probably means you’re white, middle class and conservative, and SMU/TCU stuff means you more than likely grew up in the area and went to to the school. Nobody actually wears UNT stuff out in public, so I don’t know what it would mean. If you’re wearing a non-Texas school’s stuff, you probably have a chip on your shoulder and are being obnoxious about it (OU fans, I’m looking at you). And finally, if you’re wearing Tech stuff, it means that you made the wrong choice when confronted with garbageman training or going to Tech.
Yep maybe there is still more trouble than I thought, but it isn’t the norm and I know since I first started going to games a lot has changed
These days when I go to the football (which isn’t that often any more admittedly), I’ll see usually one or two police officers, the whole atmosphere in and around the stadium is completely unintimidating and family-friendly. You can go to an away game and walk to stadium from the station in a big group without getting any trouble from the home fans.
That was not what I remember it being like when I first started going, you’d see police on their horses regardless of whether the game was midweek game against Grimbsy, there were cages at the front of stands and the police would be out in force on the touchline if the crowd started getting leery. The away fans were only allowed tickets if they traveled on the official coaches and they’d be escorted to and from the coaches to the away stand by the police and the home fans were blocked in the ground until the coaches had left.
Like said though even back then with all the additional security measures (this was when the police and the government were making a massive effort to stamp it out), actually seeing anything close to violence was very rare.
The atmosphere though was a lot more intimidating and that wasn’t just imagined, Andy Frain and his C.18 friends were notorious in the area and the idea there was any kind of code about it was untrue. They were neo-Nazis and extremely dangerous people, some of them probably genuine psychopaths, who would use knifes and other weapons and who weren’t so discerning about their targets. One of my friends who knew one of that group was beaten up in a club for giving them a funny look when they shouted “White Power!”
As to why this violence never exported itself to the US, well there are US supporter groups that identify themselves as Ultras and firms in the MLS, but they are more like hardcore supporters and don’t group together to get involved in organised violence (though there have been a few fairly minor incidents involving some of the hardcore supporters).
Come to a Packers game at Lambeau; a lot of the fans have gotten blitzed while tailgating before the game, and are drunk before they ever enter the stadium.
I’m a Packers season ticket holder (though I only go to one or two games a year now, as I live out-of-state). In 30+ years of going to Packer games, I’ve never seen anything more than a little pushing or shoving at a Packer game.
The only significant fight I’ve ever seen at a football game was at a Bear game, and then it was a couple (husband and wife, probably) in a knock-down fight with another guy, apparently because he insulted the woman (and, of the couple, it was the woman who was the nastier fighter – it took four cops to haul her off of her opponent).
Damn, and I thought people were just beating the hell out of each other in the stadium. I had no idea that you couldn’t even meander around town and have a drink/snack before or after the game. That’s just…nuts.
There is still hooliganism further down the pyramid - where terracing persists - but it’s more limited now because of smarter policing (ban of alcohol on coaches, coaches to be escorted from and to city limits, etc, etc), undercover and internet intelligence and ccvt./QUOTE]
On first reading, I thought “Good lord, they used to let the *coaches *get drunk? No wonder things degenerate into a brawl!”
The be all and end all, which experience guarentee’s 9 times out of 10 (Today I talk about) these ‘casuals’ just bounce up and down in the street, shout a bit and maybe throw a punch… Then bounce back… Compared to how it used to be; pitch invasions, people throwing darts, Stanley blades, coppers not giving a toss…
America has the potential as with so many more people likely to get involved (if it ever developed) there will be more who are ‘up for it’ than what there would be in the UK, with there being so many more Americans.
As for the neo-nazi thing, I’ve met 100’s of lads who sing ‘no surrender to the IRA’ without knowing what they’re singing about. They’re morons. It’s the failed education system and years of extremely bad parenting that’s lead to that. When I took it up, it was for the buzz and nothing else. There was once a code but yes id agree its gone. Saying that, if one of my lot were ever racist now or attacked an innocent fan we’d make an example of them back in the home boozer. Our grand-parents and their grandparents would turn in their graves, they fought and destroyed the Nazi-regime so why people are fixated on it is beyond me. Stupid is as stupid does (one for the yanks there).
I would think that the advent of high speed travel will lead to the greater homogenization of society rather than the parochialism that lends itself better to hooliganism.
There’s also the possibility that society gravitates away from the violence prone combo of beer and football and towards the more mellow mixture of pot and soccer (understanding full well that this is not the case elsewhere – I think we may evolve a little differently here).
