Sonic Youth Gossip - View Single Post - Should FIFA ban football hooligans altogether?

sonicl · 06.26.2006, 05:18 AM

I don't see how FIFA can prevent football hooliganism. The majority of people in Germany for the World Cup, or certainly the majority of English people, are people who have just travelled there to experience the atmosphere and be a part of what is going on. They don't have match tickets, so they have no links with FIFA. There are a number of idiots who can't control themselves after a few drinks andf think that they are doing some sort of patriotic duty by baiting "Johnny Foreigner", but, hell, they don't need a World Cup to do that. If these people weren't in Germany right now, they'd be somewhere in Greece or Spain instead, doing exactly the same kind of thing.

I'm afraid that there is some sick part of English culture that sees other European nations as being some kind of enemy, and victories over these "enemies" being something to gloat over. Our tabloid press cannot help itself from being anti-European when given the smallest opportunity, be it sport, politics (our media loves nothing more than to paint the EU as being anti-English, to slag off the European Parliament and to demand that Britain withdraws from the EU) or culture (all European films are regarded as being porn and all European music is regarded as never having progressed since the 1950s). This mentality gets ingrained among the more impressionable of our people and they start to beleive that by going abroad and fighting they are somehow striking a blow for Englishness in the face of the invading foreigner. Believe it or not, outside England's pre-World Cup friendlies there were stalls selling "joke" plastic World War 2 style army helmets and t-shirts with "slogans" like "two world wars and one world cup" and "who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler" on them. And people were buying this crap, because they thought it was funny.

The problem is one of culture, and as long as the media, and often politicians too, continue to propogate xenophobic attitudes, that problem is always going to exist.

It's the illness that needs to be treated, not the symptoms.

06.26.2006, 05:18 AM	#4
sonicl invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 9,527	I don't see how FIFA can prevent football hooliganism. The majority of people in Germany for the World Cup, or certainly the majority of English people, are people who have just travelled there to experience the atmosphere and be a part of what is going on. They don't have match tickets, so they have no links with FIFA. There are a number of idiots who can't control themselves after a few drinks andf think that they are doing some sort of patriotic duty by baiting "Johnny Foreigner", but, hell, they don't need a World Cup to do that. If these people weren't in Germany right now, they'd be somewhere in Greece or Spain instead, doing exactly the same kind of thing. I'm afraid that there is some sick part of English culture that sees other European nations as being some kind of enemy, and victories over these "enemies" being something to gloat over. Our tabloid press cannot help itself from being anti-European when given the smallest opportunity, be it sport, politics (our media loves nothing more than to paint the EU as being anti-English, to slag off the European Parliament and to demand that Britain withdraws from the EU) or culture (all European films are regarded as being porn and all European music is regarded as never having progressed since the 1950s). This mentality gets ingrained among the more impressionable of our people and they start to beleive that by going abroad and fighting they are somehow striking a blow for Englishness in the face of the invading foreigner. Believe it or not, outside England's pre-World Cup friendlies there were stalls selling "joke" plastic World War 2 style army helmets and t-shirts with "slogans" like "two world wars and one world cup" and "who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler" on them. And people were buying this crap, because they thought it was funny. The problem is one of culture, and as long as the media, and often politicians too, continue to propogate xenophobic attitudes, that problem is always going to exist. It's the illness that needs to be treated, not the symptoms.
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