The Death Of Football - Why The Egyptian Riot Is Not The Exception

Football, the world’s greatest spectator sport, is a magnifier. Like religion, the sporting choice of billions is capable – more than any other human construct – of extending the boundaries of human action and emotion. Football liberates, unshackles, and like a drug removes the inhibitions that prevent people from acting out within the restrictive parameters of daily existence.

Which is why football can often do what entire diplomatic corps can fail to. In the immediate aftermath of World War 2, as the victorious governments – that of Soviet Russia and the Western powers – viewed each other with increasing confusion and remained unsure of how to deal with each other, football paved the way for one of the first large-scale contacts between cultures. Over 100,000 arrived at Stamford Bridge to watch a thrilling clash between Chelsea FC and Dynamo Moscow that ended honors even (3-3), with the visiting Russians clearly getting the audience’s backing over the home team, Chelsea FC. Who needed dAi??tente? It was like a scene from Rocky IV, only real.

On a smaller scale, you see the awesome, humbling, unifying power of football in every game – whether it’s Manchester United fans singing “Fergie sign him up” after Ronaldo’s hat-trick against them, or Real Madrid and Lyon moving UEFA to relax a ban so that they could wear jerseys wishing Eric Abidal well or whether it’s AC Milan and Madrid stopping play during a game in 1989 to pay respect to the Hillsborough deceased, football offers people and the teams they support a chance to live up to the best ideals of our species, on some of the grandest stages.

Football magnifies.

And by that account, it doesn’t take an incredible measure of imagination to realize that football might also be capable of unleashing the worst within men. Because football is more than a game, because it is a metaphor for life’s universal goals, because it offers a momentary escape for billions under the crushing vice-like grip of poverty, death and tyranny; Because of all this, football – more than other global sport – becomes synonymous with national pride, cultural belonging and racial identity. Unchecked, the forces that exemplify our divisions, can eat into the sport – in parasitical fashion – and take all that is good and admirable about the game and turn it into a weapon of war.

One of the greatest enduring stupidities of the sport has been how easily it can be hijacked by hooligans to the detriment of the other sensible thousands. And yet, a game like football can clearly shrug off a few broken bottles, the odd punch, a dozen black eyes, and a few broken limbs. It’s when entire nations go mad, that the spirit of football is truly threatened.

La guerra del fA?tbol, (The Football War) between Honduras and El Salvador is a staple of modern lore ai??i?? a testament to how unique the game is. After all, how many sports can claim to evoke the kind of passions that lead to all-out war? And yet, while we chuckle at the incredulity of the war, we overlook its massive human cost. 300, 000 people were displaced as a direct result of the war, while 2000 civilians and troops lost their lives.

It shouldai??i??ve taught us all something. And apparently, it did. It taught some regimes in power, that football could be used to divert attention from more pressing matters. Football was the new opium of the masses ai??i?? one that would burn bridges instead of building them. Regimes figured they could use football as a tool of oppression ai??i?? after all, when you control the only source of entertainment for impoverished masses, you control their loyalty. So up until a few years ago, it was perfectly fine for football stadiums in Afghanistan to double up as execution grounds.

The Angolan separatist attack on the Togolese national teamai??i??s bus in early 2010 was further proof that football was now a legitimate hostage ai??i?? to be abused at will, by those in power or those seeking to get there, with the sadly tacit acknowledgement of sections of the public.

The former regime in Egypt, nearly led the country to a war with neighboring Algeria on the pretext of a football game. While dealing with rampant economic distress, coupled with his own overshadowing unpopularity, the Egyptian government figured the World Cup 2010 qualifying game with Algeria was the perfect opportunity to rouse the troops, so to speak. Imbued with needless and overly political overtones, the two legs of the game was a recipe for disaster. Attacks against the Algerian embassy ai??i?? an act of war, potentially – and violence against Egyptian businesses in Algeria, not to mention the slapping of punitive measures by Algeria against Egyptian telecom giant Orascom added to the whole unsavory feel to the episode.

As bad as that was, that would soon prove to be quite tame in comparison with what transpired last Thursday. If football could excite such passions, then surely it could be used as a tool to exact revenge? Thatai??i??s precisely what the victims of the Egyptian soccer riots say was the reason behind the Egyptian riotai??i??s massive death toll ai??i?? 74, the worst in 15 years.

Al Ahly, a club whose Ultras were instrumental in bringing down the Mubarak regime during the Arab spring, are Egyptai??i??s most popular club. A routine game with a smaller side Al Masry, in the city of Port Said, saw Al Ahly unexpectedly lose 3-1. And yet it wasnai??i??t the losing visitors who went on the rampage. Prior to the game, Al Ahly fans had engaged in nothing more devious than the usual, traditional routine of mocking their opponents with chants and banners. In any case, it beggars belief that such routine behavior could elicit such a violent reaction from fans of the triumphant Al Masry.

Egypt soccer riots - (c) abcnews.go.com — Al Masry Loves Company - Or Not

A narrow corridor, conveniently sealed off at one end, meant the visiting Al Ahly fans were rounded up like cattle and systematically culled with knives, clubs and stones. That the whole act was premeditated seems beyond question; the extent of involvement (or lack of it) from the security forces is what remains to be established. Did the security forces, nursing their wounds in a post-Mubarak Egypt and sworn enemies of the Ultras, stand by deliberately as the massacre occurred? Or did they actually incite the violence, in the first place ai??i?? just desserts, perhaps, for enemies of the security apparatus?

In the end, regardless of what theory you give credence to, all this is a poor reflection of the psyche of football fans in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is one thing to have hooliganism-induced tragedies like Heysel; it is an entirely different and infinitely more serious matter to use sport as a means of official government policy, covert or otherwise.

Bill Shankly once left us with a gem – that football was more important than life and death. What does it say about us football fans, then, if we let the hallowed sport turn into a tool of war and retribution, dragging it down into the abyss of death?

Football was supposed to be more important than that.