Hooligans, Will They Ever Learn?
It’s happened again. Derby in Stockholm and as usual there’s trouble on the stands.
This time it was Hammarbys turn to behave like asses, so much for their reputation of being the least troublesome fans in Stockholm.
It was this Monday, when the ref blew the whistle and pointed at the penalty spot. In favor for AIK. That’s when it went out of hand. After 82 minutes of football. Fireworks were fired from Hammarbys stand, right behind AIKs keeper, and landed right beside him. From what I understand it was pure luck that he didn’t got hit by it and that he noticed it so he could avoid it when it exploded. In all the commotion the no-gooders were attacked by other supporters that disapproved of their conduct.
You can read about this in pretty much any Swedish magazine covering football, and probably some foreign ones too so enough about that. Whats more interesting is the interview I read today with Hammarbys team manager (what ever he does) Peter Thunell.
First of all he says that the game should be aborted as soon as something like this happens. I couldn’t agree more. Time and time again we see this happen and we often see that the team who’s fans caused the interruption benefits from it. The signal it sends to restart a game after these events is that crime pays and it shouldn’t.
Secondly he has realized something more of us must realize: it’s come to a point where the police, clubs, supporter clubs, security companies etc are powerless. There’s nothing that can be done other than playing with empty stands. What needs to happen is that the low lives need to understand that they are not welcome, that their actions will only hurt themselves and others.
I said that the police can’t do anything. You can always argue that increased penalties to both the criminals and the clubs might make people think twice before doing something stupid and I think that’s one step in the right direction but it’s not a solution. It won’t be enough, if it was we wouldn’t have much crime at all.
Instead we have to react and by we I mean other supporters. Peter Thunell claims that if the game is aborted and the team who’s fans that cause it automatically loose the game (which is the effect of an aborted game) the fans will self-sanitize this problem by simply beating the person/persons that misbehave up, thus making sure that they’ll learn their lesson and not do it again. He doesn’t say it’s a necessarily good way to solve the problem but it seems to be the only one that has even a remote chance of working. I actually tend to agree even though I consider people beating up idiots are idiots themselves.
The reality is that there’s a problem without a solution so why not try the law of the jungle on this one?
