Landeskunde GB – Football hooliganism ªª/ªªª

A Maligned Game Fights Back

hat a mad, sad, joyously unpredictable game soccer can be. One year ago, witnessing the

crushing to death of 95 spectators in an overcrowded Hillsborough stadium, I would have given anything to be elsewhere.

WThis year, in the same competition at the

same stage and involving many Hillsborough survivors, I stayed at home to watch Eng-land’s Cup semifinals on television. And so compelling was the action, so enriching the bond between players and fans, I knew I was again in the wrong place. But we cannot wash away the horror of deaths in a sports stadium, nor indeed heal those maimed in mind and body from last April 15.

Yet here, in another stadium, here again was Liverpool FC, the club whose spectators died, defending the cup it ultimately won last spring. But, unexpectedly, Liverpool this time lost a pulsating contest against Crystal Palace, a lower team whose spirit simply refused to lie down. Liverpool, the team and spectators, accepted in a sporting manner that the under-dog had outfought them fiercely but fairly. Indeed, Crystal Palace, twice behind, over-hauled Liverpool to win, 4-3, after extra time. It is the spirit of a maligned game fighting back. Courageous men, believing their day had come, had a go and upset opponents of greater wealth, power and experience.

The match excited 40,000 spectators in the stadium. Neither Hillsborough, nor the catas-trophes of Heysel and Bradford in 1985, have broken the addiction to soccer spectating. In-deed, English crowds are steadfastly rising. Sensible things have happened at last: im-proved policing and safety, removal of killer fences, the comparative restoration of specta-tor sanity and more attacking play. The hooli-gan plague is contained, not beaten and there is alarm that some English as well as some Dutch thugs still threaten to make the World Cup in Italy their stamping ground.

Damn them. But how can we reconcile such horror and

joy around what so many people dismiss as an irrelevant game? A social worker who coun-sels the bereaved, comments: “They’ve been in prison for the past year. There’s so much raw feeling for the football club and so many people trying to make sense of it all.”

Sense? There is no rational explanation, of why men kicking a windbag around a field become the focal point of so many people’s lives, or why even in death the compulsion draws their next of kin. The game is a release valve for tensions and divisions, and as Crys-tal Palace reminded us, can sometimes mock the laws of privilege and riches.

The victory, for the players and the game, was broadcast around the world. Also tele-vised, three days previously, was the Spanish Cup final. Here were Barcelona and Real Madrid, multi-millionaires infinitely richer in technique and guile, and woefully bereft of sportsmanship.

King Juan Carlos sat somberly through an exhibition of cynicism, of boots aimed at opponents, and players feigning fouls that weren’t there. The King’s Cup was ceremoni-ally handed to Barcelona, whose goalie was then bloodied by a missile thrown during the lap of honor. Later, Barcelona fanatics be-came drunk on this hollow victory, looted, rioted and stabbed to death two people in the street.

No gloating from this quarter, just a ques-tion: Can it be that sport played passionately but in the proper manner soothes the savage breast while sport played by hoodlums is a catalyst to murder?

[Rob Hughes in THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 11 April, 1990; shortened; 543 words]

hm-abo – Mai 1990

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