Joao Magalhaes wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> >A better question for the short term is to ask what is it about society
> >in nations where such things occur that not only causes or contributes
> >to this happening, but also what is that allows it to continue? We don't
> >have such problems here in the US over any sport I know of.
>
> The problems with soccer fans have been solved in England (generally
> considered the most dangerous fans). By increasing security in stadiums
> and, most of all, by identifying hooligans and punishing them (either by
> jail or by preventing them to go to games). In Italy or Turkey, on the
> contrary, authorities don't really want to solve these problems; my theory
> is that it's in their culture to support their teams in a very aggressive
> fashion and authorities don't want to intervene. As for sports in the US, I
> agree there's much less violence; I remember watching an NBA game at NY in
> which at the start of the game it was asked the public not to use
> aggressive language. Something I, as a Portuguese, find amazing; it can
> happen for police officers to insult players from the away team in
> Portuguese soccer matches! Anyway, in the US you have seasonal riots, high
> incidence of violent crimes, etc. to compensate for a lack of violence in
> sports.
Seasonal riots? Really? Never heard of them. Do you mean riots in the big cities
like LA once a decade??? Note that the social and legal systems in cities like
LA are as opressive as any european country (and far more racist). Cities that
don't have such oppressive laws have very european level violent crime rates,
while few places in the US have property crime rates at even a small fraction of
the huge amount over there in europe. Moreover, non-gun violent crime in europe
pretty closely matches that seen in most of the urban US, while suburban and
rural violence is far lower.
New York fans are considered the rudest and most offensive fans in the US (I
recall all the Mariners/Yankees playoffs games I went to a 5 years ago, where
New York fans were throwing garbage on the outfield..The Seattle fans wanted to
go out and sort it for recycling...;) ), so if you were amazed at the goings on
at a New York game, then you would be stunned at a major league game in most
other cities.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:21 MDT