When two large group of young and middle-aged men, wielding various instruments of violence from knives and knuckle dusters to iron bars first charge , then beat each other – to death in one case-and leave many others injured-severely in several cases-, all because they happen to support different football teams-there is something badly wrong not just in the game but the whole context in which it’s played.
Judging by reports that have emerged, the circumstances of the death of a Deportivo La Coruña fan at the hands of an Atletico mob were particularly horrific . The victim was beaten, then thrown into the river Manzanares, there to be watched by his aggressors who prevented anyone from rescuing him as he struggled in the freezing water and eventually died of cardiac arrest, produced by the trauma of his injuries and hypothermia. A small group of policemen, the only ones to be nearby initially, were prevented from intervening by the rabble.
Predictably there has been no shortage of outraged comments from the clubs themselves through to the Spain’s professional football league (LFP) and the Spanish Federation of Football to the weekend violence at Madrid’s Calderon stadium involving rival fans from Atletico and Deportivo La Coruña .
And yet La Liga games continued, live and broadcast worldwide as if this was just another unfortunate incident of football violence carried out by unrepresentative minorities for whom no one else needs to take responsibility. “I want to say that this has nothing to do with football,” Atletico president Enrique Cerezo said in an interview with Spanish television after champions Atletico won the match 2-0.“These are radical groups who meet up and these are the consequences,” Cerezo added. “I repeat that neither Atletico nor Deportivo have anything to do with these incidents, they are organised by radical groups who have their histories and their accounts to settle.”
Such a narrative no doubt suits the powers that be and the whole complicit scene that has turned the modern game into first and foremost a money-making machine, regardless of the consequences. Spanish football, might produce some of the best players and best games in the world, but like the county’s politics it is short on accountability and ethics , on a range of issues, from racism to tax evasion.
The weekend violence should have brought about a sea change in attitude beginning with the suspension of ALL La Liga games for at least a week, the permanent ban from stadiums of all fans with a police record, and the immediate launch of a full scale independent enquiry into the violence of the ultras in Spanish football, its context and its cause.
Among the questions worth asking. So none of these fans were tickets holders? Was there no police intelligence? What was security in and around the stadium? Just who are these guys who beat the shit each other instead of enjoying a game together? What arrangements do they have with certain club officials? What role do star players and TV broadcasters feel they have in stopping football violence? What role should they have? Where is best practice in terms of policing and fan conduct ? Lessons to be learnt?
Jimmy, you have overstepped the mark and I disagree with much of what you say!
– The ultras of Atletico and Deportivo, prepared the event as their lives are focused on fighting. It’s nothing new. Yes, it is always sad if someone dies. But for me, there are more important, tragic, dramatic things in life … than a group of violent thugs, many already known to the police, who want to fight amongst themselves
– I have a theory that football was invented for aggressive males (the masculine part of our nature, so I include women too!) so that they can express their aggression, most of them screaming in the stadium, a few fighting amongst themselves. It works very well, much better than gang confrontations as in Río were thugs run municipalities, religious fanatics killing in the name of God (in Syria every hour probably more are killed than in the whole 150 years of football), in the trenches, etc.
– Money: football violence has nothing to do with this. Remember the battles of the 70’s and 80’s in England? Football now has nothing to compare with those times in terms of financial muscle, and every weekend then there were major confrontations, remember Heysel?
– Suspend all games in the Liga for weeks because an ultra dies? Come on Jimmy, that pleasure of millions frustrated because of an organized fight between criminals???
– Football is not just a game, an art … it is a war between two teams who invade the territory of another aiming to conquer the territory by putting the ball into the oppositions net. It is primitive, emotional and violence arises. If you take the aggression out then it would be something else, and it would become like those virtual games, with no connection to real life, without any emotion.
You give me the impression that want to reduce football to just being an art and if that happens, it would have lost all its tension, interest and vitality. Football was well defined by the English writer George Orwell: “international football is the continuation of war by other means”.