Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Pagan Sacrifices

In 1985 fanatics of unfortunate renown killed thirty-nine Italian fans on the terraces of the old Heysel Stadium in Brussels. The English club Liverpool was set to play Juventus from Italy in the European Cup final when hooligans went on the rampage. The Italian fans, cornered against a wall, were trampled among themselves or pushed into an abyss. Television broadcast the butchery live along with the match, which was not suspended.

After that, Italy was off-limits to English fans, even those who carried proof of a good upbringing. In the 1990 World Cup, Italy had no choice but to allow fans onto Sardinia, where the English team was to play, but there were more Scotland Yard agents among them than soccer addicts, and the British minister of sport personally took charge of keeping an eye on them.

One century earlier, in 1890, The Times of London had warned: “Our ‘Hooligans’ go from bad to worse … the worse circumstance is that they multiply … the ‘Hooligan’ is a hideous excrescence on our civilization.” Today, such excrescence continues to perpetrate crimes under the pretext of soccer.

Wherever hooligans appear, they sow panic. Their bodies are plastered with tattoos on the outside and alcohol on the inside. Patriotic odds and ends hang from their necks and ears, they use brass knuckles and truncheons, and they sweat oceans of violence while howling “Rule Britannia” and other rancorous cheers from the lost Empire. In England and in other countries, these thugs also frequently brandish Nazi symbols and proclaim their hatred of blacks, Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, or Jews.

“Go back to Africa!” roared one Real Madrid “ultra,” who enjoyed shouting insults at blacks, “because they’ve come to take away my job.”

Under the pretext of soccer, Italian “Naziskins” whistle at black players and call the enemy fans “Jews”: “Ebrei!” they shout.

Rowdy crowds that insult soccer the way drunks insult wine are sadly not exclusive to Europe. Nearly every country suffers from them, some more, some less, and over time the rabid dogs have multiplied. Until a few years ago, Chile had the friendliest fans I’d ever seen: men, and women and children too, who held singing contests in the stands that even had judges. Today the Chilean club Colo-Colo has its own gang of troublemakers, “The White Claw,” and the gang from the University of Chile team is called “The Underdogs.”

In 1993 Jorge Valdano calculated that during the previous fifteen years more than a hundred people had been killed by violence in Argentina’s stadiums. Violence, Valdano said, grows in direct proportion to social injustice and the frustrations that people face in their daily lives. Everywhere, gangs of hooligans attract young people tormented by lack of jobs and lack of hope. A few months after he said this, Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires was defeated 2–0 by River Plate, their traditional rival. Two River fans were shot dead as they left the stadium. “We tied 2–2,” commented a young Boca fan interviewed on TV.

In a column he wrote in other times about other sports, Dio Chrysostom painted a portrait of Roman fans of the second century after Christ: “When they go to the stadium, it’s as if they had discovered a cache of drugs. They forget themselves entirely and without a drop of shame they say and do the first thing that comes into their heads.” The worst catastrophe in the history of sport occurred there, in Rome, four centuries later. In the year 512, thousands died — they say thirty thousand, though it’s hard to believe — in a street war between two groups of chariot-racing fans that lasted several days.

In soccer stadiums, the tragedy with the most victims occurred in 1964 in the capital of Peru. When the referee disallowed a goal in the final minutes of a match against Argentina, oranges, beer cans, and other projectiles rained down from the stands burning with rage. The police responded with tear gas and bullets, and provoked a stampede. A police charge crushed the crowd against the exit gates, which were closed. More than three hundred died. That night a multitude protested in the streets of Lima: against the referee, not the police.