Soccer Hooligans: A Plan to Hit Them Where They Live
Anxiously, the nation turns here for advice on how to deal with hooligans at the 1994 World Cup, which will be staged in this republic, and we accommodate with our customary aplomb.
One must deal with soccer hooligans, guilty of calculated mayhem, at two levels.
The first level calls for treatment of the hooligans while all parties are on television. Security forces look for the camera, and, assured that it is there, proceed by Marquess of Queensberry, leading the violators humanely into the wagon.
The cops may even offer them a cigarette, or a chocolate bar, and volunteer to call their mothers.
Those guarding the ramparts of civil rights will applaud, delighted to find that individuals threatening the peace, destroying property, throwing rocks and bottles at police and beating bystanders are receiving treatment befitting the kinder, gentler society.
Level Two is activated once the guilty parties move out of range of the camera, at which point the cops announce to their antagonists, “OK, Reggie, it is now you and us.”
Some students of the human mind see violence among soccer fans as a mere extension of the hostile environment developing in today’s society.
Others argue that it is an outgrowth of comportment fans witness on the field--brawls with officials, brawls among players.
You think about this, then ask clinically, “Why don’t baseball fans riot, looking at knockdown pitches, bench-clearing beefs and skirmishes with umpires that include pushing, spitting and dust-kicking?”
And basketball? Fights on the floor are almost a daily event and technical fouls for boorish comportment common.
If the conduct of hockey players rubbed off on fans, rioting would be endless.
Blaming the actions of soccer hooligans on society is like Donald Trump blaming the banks for having all that money.
If the thought is advanced by some scholars that punishment of soccer hooligans is generally too light--often no worse that deportation--the same feeling is fostered in connection with violent athletes.
A federal judge in Los Angeles, Irving Hill, who has made an extensive study of pro sports, told us one day:
“We have had a failure in the legal process where sports violence on the field is concerned. Few want to prosecute. And in the rare event that someone does, courts often will wait until the season is over so that the defendant doesn’t miss a game.
“Owners, above all, coddle violent players, defending their mischief and even paying their fines to the league. Well, people not held accountable for their belligerence become more prone to antisocial conduct.”
So what may be happening in sports may parallel what is happening in daily life. We have a society full of unprovoked and senseless violent acts, and we have apologists for each, leading to a lack of self-restraint.
Since soccer hooligans are universally despised, we submit, with pardonable pride, this unique plan for dealing with them at Levels One and Two.
Not long ago in England, a train on which we were riding made a stop in the town of Reading. On a side rail stood three cars, every window smashed on each.
“Train wreck?” we asked the conductor.
“Football fans,” he answered glumly, adding the windows were broken while non-hooligan passengers were also aboard.
When the World Cup arrives in the U.S. in ‘94, by which time American soccer hooligans will have joined their foreign brothers, a trade-out will be suggested. If the hooligans get tough, so do the cops.
