Friday, April 6, 2007

"Good Friday"

This week, the UEFA soccer championships have continued. Yes, I am an American who is a HUGE soccer fan.

Soccer is a tremendously fast-paced game, played by men (and women, in their leagues) at the pinnacle of athletic conditioning, and a sport that exhibits sportsmanship, cunning, and quick decisions made in split seconds by eleven team members functioning as an organic unit. It is, truly, "the Beautiful Game."

That is, however, on the field. In the stands, the conditions can be far different.

Soccer hooliganism is a pervasive infection spreading through soccer fandom. Fans need to stand up and bring it to a screeching halt.

This week, yes, yet again, two tremendously embarrassing events for soccer fans worldwide marred the important work on the field, and shifted the focus up into the bleachers, instead of on the field, where the focus belongs.

At the game in Rome between Manchester United and AS Roma, two of the top teams in the world, you'd think the fans had been culled from the most base prisons of both Italy and England. Roma fans and Man U fans tied it up, and the Roman police waded in with batons and riot gear, wailing away and cracking heads.

One visual irony was that, above the Roma fans, a massive banner swayed back and forth at the end of a thirty-foot pole, emblazoned with "SPQR", abbreviations for "The Senate and People of Rome." The whole scene up there above the field was like a two-thousand year throwback to the days of the gladiatorial games and the horse races of the Circus Maximus when centurions, on orders of Roman emperors, waded into Roman crowds, hacking left and right with their gladii iberii (shortswords) and slamming down the rioters with their scuta (shields) to restore some semblance of order.

Yesterday, in the UEFA quarterfinal match between Sevilla, Spain, and the English Premiere League team Tottenham Hotspurs, the situation was similar, although the Spanish police were slightly more reticent to use brute force. Tottenham and Sevilla were on the pitch, the Hotspur goalie drew a foul against a Sevilla striker, and a penalty kick was awarded. In the stands, the fans went ballistic, they went at each other, hammer and tong, out for blood, and they got it.

In Italy, earlier in the season, in the incredibly talented league Calcio Serie A, at a game between Palermo and Catania, fans threw so many flaming, smoking flares onto the pitch that the game had to be stalled over half an hour so the players down on the field could breathe. In the stands, if I remember correctly, a few fans slipped this surly mortal coil and assumed immortality at the hands of their fellow soccer lovers.

What in the heck is wrong with people?

It is a game, folks! What is happening on the pitch is not life and death, so why turn buying a ticket to a soccer game a lottery ticket to the great beyond?

In our world, we have plenty of things that can kill us instead of being in the middle of riots in the bleachers catalyzed by someone's mindless fanaticism over a basic, simple, and beautiful game.

Here is a dose of reality for my fellow soccer fans: The game on the pitch is going to have its ups and downs. Your team is going to do great, AND your team is going to do horribly. Your team is going to win, AND your team is going to lose. And, yes, your team is going to benefit from stupid referee decisions, AND your team is going to get shafted by the same stupid decisions.

And you in the stands, it is YOUR responsibility to keep your head on your shoulders, not elsewhere, if you get my drift. It is your responsibility, as a ticket holder, to not only watch the field, but those around you as well. If you see some drunken and/or belligerent total freak who is giving all the signs of getting so worked up he will rip a seat out of the stands and hurl it, go and tell a policeman.

Ask yourself: Did that hooligan pay for your ticket? Nope. Is that hooligan going to give you money back for ruining your game? Nope. And is that hooligan going to pay the penalty for besmirching The Beautiful Game? Nope.

We ALL pay the price for soccer hooliganism, and for battles in the lists between fans. And when you travel to support your beloved team, you are a representative, an ambassador, of that team, of your city, of your nation. And, yes, you are there as a representative of all the other fans, like me, who are not lucky enough to make it to the stands for that important UEFA quarterfinal match. Act like it.

We are all soccer fans, my friends, and we are all tarred with the same brush when a few unbalanced loons ruin the reputation of fans of what is the most enjoyable fan sport in the world.

Joel Pousson
American Soccer Fan