The good news for England is that its soccer team defeated Germany in a major tournament for the first time in 34 years.
The bad news is that its so-called fans tried to trash yet another European town over the weekend.
The English soccer hooligans are the modern equivalent of the Vandals who sacked and pillaged the Roman Empire. If this sort of thing goes on, perhaps some day English will become a lower-case noun and verb like vandal, as in: “Those thugs have englishized our town again.”
Nobody quite knows why young (and some not so young) English males run amok when they touch foreign soil.
Sociologists suggest such behavior is encouraged by Britain’s tabloid newspapers, prone to refer to Germans as Krauts, French as Frogs and citizens of almost any Third World country in even more abusive terms.
Racist attacks and killings within England are commonplace, particularly after late-night drinking. Racial hate crimes average 63 a day in London alone.
The latest depredations occurred Saturday in Charleroi, Belgium, and in Brussels before and after England defeated Germany 1-0 for the first time since England won the World Cup in 1966.
Any suggestion that the English riot out of frustration, because their soccer teams usually lose, was dispelled by this outburst, which led to the arrest of more than 800 fans and the rapid removal of most of them by Belgian air force planes to England.
Some remained in Belgian jails to face charges.
Soccer’s ruling body on the continent, the Union of European Football Associations, has had enough. Blaming the British government for letting soccer thugs go abroad, the group said one more riot will mean England is out of the tournament. Prime Minister Tony Blair has backed this tough stand, calling the hooligans a national disgrace.
The test will come Tuesday night, when England meets Romania in Charleroi for the chance to advance to the quarterfinals of the Euro 2000 championships.A hard core of English hooligans is neo-Nazi in outlook, belonging to a group called Combat 18. The group takes its name from the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, AH, Adolf Hitler’s initials.
But Belgian authorities were surprised to find many of those arrested over the weekend had never been in trouble before and included a sprinkling of lawyers, bankers, engineers and other professionals. Hooliganism is clearly a growing pastime.
Some spirited young men may engage in brawls as a kind of lark, but there is nothing remotely amusing about the behavior of the worst of them.
Before a match in Turkey recently, some English fans exposed themselves and desecrated the Turkish flag. Two English fans were stabbed, and the two opposing sets of fans staged a repeat riot in Copenhagen when their teams met there.
David Beckham is a particular target of the hooligans. He is a talented English player married to Victoria Adams, otherwise known as the pop singer Posh Spice, and is the father of an infant boy. Beckham has never been forgiven by the hooligans for having been expelled from a match in the last World Cup in Paris. They are convinced he cost England the match and its shot at the Cup.
When he came off the field after England’s first Euro 2000 match against Portugal two weeks ago, hooligans taunted him by chanting: “Your wife is a whore, and we hope your kid dies of cancer.”
Beckham responded with a rude gesture that normally would have resulted in a fine. But soccer authorities concluded he had sufficient provocation.
England’s first match of Euro 2000 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, went off peacefully. Authorities attributed this partly to the low-key, friendly approach of Dutch police.
They said it may also have helped that Dutch bars served only low-alcohol beer, and many fans were mellowed out by the marijuana freely available in the coffee bars.
Other European nations have their hooligans–notably Germany and the Netherlands. But before Euro 2000, German authorities enacted a special law allowing the confiscation of passports if officials suspected hooligans would travel to Euro 2000. The passports of about 500 Germans were seized.British magistrates also have the authority to ban known hooligans from going abroad but rarely exercise it. Even if they did, authorities point out that many of those arrested in Belgium would have been allowed to travel because they had no record of causing trouble.
As many have noted, soccer hooligans remain England’s leading export.
