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Delivered-To: rah@shipwright.com
Delivered-To: clips@philodox.com
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 09:24:11 -0400
To: Philodox Clips List
From: "R.A. Hettinga"
Subject: [Clips] How Britain Beat Hooliganism
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http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB115049661838582842.html
The Wall Street Journal
How Britain Beat Hooliganism
By CHUCK CULPEPPER
June 17, 2006; Page P3
A NUMBER OF countries have grappled with soccer-related violence, but one
has significantly reduced hooliganism with some unusual steps that would
startle most American sports fans.
The country is England, and measures range from deciding who can buy
tickets to telling fans where they can sit. For matches with entrenched
animosity between the teams, some clubs will sell only to people with a
ticket-buying history, meaning a tourist or casual fan can't simply buy an
available seat. To minimize taunting, fans of visiting teams must enter
stadiums through separate doors marked "visitors," and then must sit
together.
Beyond that, tickets often bear the name of the purchaser, so in case of a
problem, police may track down the responsible parties and soccer clubs may
suspend privileges. Closed-circuit cameras blanket stadiums and help
prosecutors in soccer-violence cases.
With soccer venues purged of the rowdy standing room-only terraces of the
1980s, and fans have become "much less anonymous in the stadium," says John
Williams of the University of Leicester's Sir Norman Chester Centre for
Football Research. "Now we have a very controlled spectator space." Beer
drinking, too, is tightly regulated, and is limited to concession areas.
Domestic soccer-related arrests plummeted to about 2,725 in the 2004-05
season from some 8,000 a year in the 1980s. More recently, English
authorities have tackled problems with their fans at overseas soccer
matches. In the run-up to the World Cup, British authorities required some
3,300 known hooligans to turn in their passports to local police,
preventing them from traveling to Germany. More than 90% complied, and
airport agents have ensnared a smattering of others who tried to leave the
country.
Additionally, Britain sent 40 police officers to Germany to help prevent
outbreaks, and four prosecutors to gather evidence for any potential court
cases.
It's a big change from the '80s, when most big-city matches in England had
some hooligan incident or element. The crisis peaked in May 1985, when 39
Italian and Belgian fans died in Belgium when a wall collapsed after
Liverpool fans charged toward the fans of an Italian team, Juventus. That
led the European soccer federation to ban Britain's soccer teams from
competition for five years.
While no one in the British police or government considers the hooliganism
problem solved, hooligans have been pushed away from the stadiums. Some 59%
of the arrests in the 2004-05 season took place away from stadium grounds,
and a police spokesman said the measures have forced some hooligans to use
the Internet or cellphones to arrange fights. On the World Cup's first
weekend, about 20 hooligans started a fight that left 16 people injured,
but it took place at a big-screen viewing of the England-Paraguay match in
East London.
Bigger incidents occurred in other European countries this past season,
particularly Poland, where a riot after a league championship in Warsaw
last month led to the arrest of 231 people and the hospitalization of 50
police officers. In March, a 21-year-old fan was stabbed to death in
Krakow. At the World Cup earlier this week, ahead of the Germany-Poland
match, police arrested 40 Polish fans and found knives on four of them.
In Britain, annual fan surveys by Leicester University show that
hooliganism now "figures very little into their perception of football,"
Mr. Williams says. While fan bases remain predominately young and male,
research shows steady increases in both elderly and women attendees.
Perhaps the most telling statistic: About 30% of all professional soccer
matches in England don't have any police on scene at all, according to
government's United Kingdom Football Policing Unit.
An estimated 60,000 English fans traveled to Nuremberg for the country's
second World Cup game, against Trinidad and Tobago. Some 28 people were
arrested, but largely for scalping, public drunkenness and trying to hop
the stadium fence.
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-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'