by Renegade

Created on: April 18, 2007   Last Updated: April 27, 2007

Soccer hooliganism is a big problem in Europe. It is associated in particular with England, after many incidents involving British soccer fans both in their own country and abroad. The problem is now how to stop hooliganism occuring.

Some countries have a fairly brutal way of stopping crowd problems at soccer matches: they send in riot police and hit all the supporters until they stop moving, whether it's because they've knocked them out, or because the trouble has settled. This was recently seen in Italy, where what should have been a minor disturbance was dealt with by police wielding batons and shields. But it doesn't work, and Italian football is now becoming the badboy in terms of troublesome supporters.

Soccer's governing bodies have certain powers to force clubs to take action against hooliganism. The sport is governed in each country first by a national body, which is answerable to a continental one, which in turn answers to FIFA. FIFA is the top level of government in professional soccer. Penalties can be imposed on clubs who's supporters don't follow the rules, ranging from fan lockouts, to suspension of an entire nation from certain competitions. Since mmost clubs rely on ticket sales to make up a large portion of their income, they have a real reason to do everything they can to make sure their fans aren't the ones causing trouble.

The problem for soccer teams is that preventing an incident occuring at all is a lot more difficult than reacting to one. Stewards are employed to patrol the stadium during a match, and the team as a whole has the power to expel or ban anyone from their stadium, at their discretion. But neither of those options are of any user except as a threat, until after something has happened.

Many soccer teams now approach the issue via the media. It's not uncommon to see appeals for calm in a newspaper on the day of a potentially explosive match, and these messages can be reinforced with quotes from the team's star players themselves. The idea seems to be that people will be more likely to listen to their rolemodels than to a list of rules.

The reaction of the police is also a key factor in tackling hooliganism. As evidenced in the aforementioned incident in Italy, when riot police wade into the crowd, it usually provokes more trouble. Most people are at a soccer match to watch football, not to start a fight, so the key for many countries now is to keep potential troublemakers seperated. Fights are often started between supports of opposing teams, so it is important to keep them apart; in the UK the police even send a helicopter over stadiums before and after important matches, so they can get an overview of where everyone is.

No nations currently have the answer to soccer hooliganism, but as with so many other things, we may be looking at the wrong question. The problem of hooliganism to this extent is exclusive to soccer, and mainly occurs in European countries... perhaps if the reasons for tht were known, the problem could be solved.

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