Hooliganism? Dead? It's alive, kicking and costing us our time, money and reputation

There are still countless morons out there using football as an excuse to relieve whatever primal urges tell them to fight, throw bricks, light fires and stab people (and most of them ‘support’ Millwall). Most of us will just be battling with the question ‘why?’, but when events like last night’s at West Ham occur, it’s not just legs, ribs and faces that get a kicking.

Historically of course Chelsea hardly have a clear bill of health when it comes to hooliganism. But aside from a bit of a skirmish outside Fulham Broadway after the 2008 Champions League Final, I’ve haven’t personally witnessed any sign of violence at Stamford Bridge this decade. I suspect the vast majority of fans up and down the country (including Hammers supporters) could say the same thing about their clubs.

The fact that hooliganism has pretty much been stamped out in the UK has probably made us all a little bit more sensitive to events like last night and the worrying eye-witness accounts all the more appealing to a gleeful media. But last night’s events at Upton Park – as has been widely reported in the papers – were genuinely a throwback to the 1980s, where rivalries between clubs far more regularly spilled into violent clashes on the streets.

Of course it is very possible that those causing most of the trouble last night weren’t ‘fans’ with match tickets, rather thugs with some form of club allegiance to Millwall or West Ham who made arrangements before the game to square up outside the ground. Apparently this is still fairly common across a lot of English clubs – that is ‘fans’ making arrangements with each other over the internet and mobile phones to meet up and fight each other – it just so happens that most of the time they manage to ‘miss’ each other, unintentionally or otherwise.

The obvious impact of last night’s violence is plain to see – reports of at least one man in hospital and bloody pictures splashed over our television screens and morning papers. Not to undermine any potential human cost (and there weren’t many of those involved last night), but actually the impact stretches wider than this, and beyond the FA’s knee-jerk reaction of worrying about their 2018 World Cup bid.

The hooliganism hangover from the 1980s means that there is still a large police presence at each Premier League game. Despite the relative lack of trouble, there are still probably 100+ police officers – some of them mounted police – at each home game at Stamford Bridge. And who foots that bill? The clubs - or rather the fans. The cost of policing games, like increasing player wages, is just another cost that gets passed on to fans in the form of higher ticket prices and more costly merchandise. And it’s the fans who have to queue longer to get into and out of the stadium when events like last night’s cause police forces to go into overdrive.

And memories of the 80s are longer than you think. Despite the fact that English football has a great recent record on violence, already this morning non-football fans (in my office at least) are remembering what they really think about football: that it’s a working class game watched by hooligans. It doesn’t matter who it’s watched by – and it’s truly a game for everyone – very quickly football supporters can get tarred with the same brush.

And, as the FA fear, it won’t take much for the worldwide football community to jump to the same conclusion either (English football being the flavour of the month with UEFA and FIFA ‘n’ all that). Despite the terrible records of Italian and German fans in particular, which go strangely overlooked, it will only take a couple of events like last night’s for English football’s reputation to be dragged back to the dark ages, where last night’s idiots belong.

Comments

[chelsfan]

i agree with all of this, last night was a complete disgrace. watching those fat skinheads run across the pitch was just embarassing, and for all football fans too.

think west ham fans were probably the worst culprits last night, though its no surprise millwall were involved