The beautiful game?

Hmmmm…

What have we here?

‘Youth’? ‘the fringe’? ‘hooligans’? No, something grimmer.

We have a social problem at the European level. It’s not localized because it happens in many different counties, and football seems unable to unlink itself from this violence.

In their second leg of the Champions League tie between the 2 Milan’s the crowd decided the game. We had an American 4th of July as flares reigned down on the pitch to the glee of Italian 'hooligans' sitting behind the goal and the dismay of limp police caused the referee to stop the match. In Holland, England and Italy we are seeing a coliseum mentality.

Why it’s not getting more attention I don’t know, but there been such a sudden rise in the tossing of objects at players lately. Why has crowd trouble started to emerge as a serious problem again?

Since UEFA and FIFA seem as limp as the police, here are the sorts of measures that can be taken to cut this out:

• Object gets thrown, empty the entire section… peer pressure works wonders
• Cameras
• Stop the cheating culture of players

That’s all, and I’d bet it would stop. And it if does not, it’s the time for national governments to intervene, since we seem to have a sort of sanctioned violence now. Something that wouldn’t be tolerated on the streets, mind you.

And to you losers that throw flares: get a girlfriend or something, it’s just a game.