The violence in Egypt on Wednesday, where more than 70 people were killed in battles between rival soccer fans after a game, is so extreme it seems not to bear on love of sport at all. Many fans had arrived at the game with weapons.
Soccer violence has plagued European teams, too. The beautiful game, perhaps for no other reason than that it is the world’s most popular sport, has experienced the worst violence, though on relatively rare occasions. An organized group of rowdies known as the “ultras” reportedly contributed to the massacre. A country in a state of upheaval, moving fitfully toward a more open society, may be vulnerable to violent anarchy partly because of the loss of recognized authority. Or maybe it was just a soccer riot.
North America has not had the same fan-instigated violence but is not immune to a loss of proportion. The Vancouver riot after last season’s Stanley Cup final was just one example of post-championship hooliganism; there have been sports-related riots in Montreal and Edmonton, too. These are not pitched battles between rivals but involve out-of-control drunkenness and, in one famous Montreal case, a political element. In Vancouver, it bordered on the miraculous that no one died.
What is it about sports that looses the Furies? Perhaps sports are just an excuse for mob behaviour. The riots in Britain last summer did not follow sports. They followed a police shooting, but it quickly became clear they had nothing to do with that killing. The deeper problem may be why so many people in one place are apparently so eager to be part of a mob.
The loss of proportion over sports also shows up in small ways. In Canada, it’s manifested in an acceptance of vicious abuse of referees, the neutral arbiter. A new survey of 632 minor hockey referees, mostly in Ontario, by Alun Ackery, of the University of Toronto’s Division of Emergency Medicine, found widespread physical attacks on referees – they were doused with coffee, waited for in parking lots, grabbed by the throat (by a player), punched in the face (by a parent), they had an arm shattered by a slap shot at close range, they were cross-checked in the head, and so on.
Egypt’s soccer massacre may not have anything to tell us about Vancouver, Montreal or the corner hockey rink. But it does have something to say about how the essence of sports, not winning but sportsmanship and the pursuit of an ideal, can be overtaken by the worst instincts, anywhere.
