13 02 07 German Soccer Team May Walk Off Field

So claims an AP headline of a story relating the state of soccer in Germany. "We have the right to leave the field if we see these rioters again in the stadium. We want to send out a signal," Leipzig captain Holger Krauss said concerning their next match after 800 fans of a team in Saxony rioted this past weekend - injuring 39 police, 6 fans and quite a few police cars.
Soccer officials and police believe the Leipzig hooligans were inspired by the Feb. 2 rioting in Italy that led to the death of a police officer. At the match between Catania and Palermo, 100 people were injured. All professional soccer games were suspended for a week. Source: AP
Don't you love that word? Hooligans!

We have an easy solution to this problem - stop pretending that soccer is 'football' and play the real thing! Perhaps the fans won't turn into hooligans if the game they are watching doesn't bore them to tears. With American sports, the violence, if any, is on the field where it belongs. Yes, there are the odd fist fights but involvement by more than three or four fans is a rarity. European soccer hooliganism seems to be more the rule than exception and almost always involves hundreds.

Of course, we could be completely off base. Maybe soccer isn't boring. It could just be that European sports fans are barbarians!


  
Remember personal info?

Emoticons / Textile

Comment moderation is enabled on this site. This means that your comment will not be visible on this site until it has been approved by an editor.

This is to prevent automated spam. Please type your answer all in CAPS
 

  (Register your username / Log in)

Notify:
Hide email:

Small print: All html tags except <b> and <i> will be removed from your comment. You can make links by just typing the url or mail-address.



Copyright 2004-2008 by Gedanken Experiment (previously Rant Street) except as otherwise noted. Our terms of use are as follows: Content on Gedanken Experiment may not be indexed, cached, reproduced or syndicated in any manner by any party whose purpose is to provide such an index, cache, reproduction or syndication of our content for a monetary fee or other consideration to their clients, customers or users. Content on Gedanken Experiment may not be copied, reproduced, republished, indexed, cached, uploaded, posted , transmitted, framed or distributed in any way, without the prior written permission of Gedanken Experiment, except that a) user may download, display, or print one copy of the materials on any single computer solely for user's use; b) user may briefly quote or excerpt for use in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment or as part of a news report as per fair use guidelines of www.copyright.gov; c) internet search engines which provide the public the ability to search online content at no charge (free) may index and cache content from Gedanken Experiment which is not explicitly blocked by robots.txt; in case (a), (b) and (c) above user agrees to keep intact all copyright, trademark, and other proprietary notices of both Gedanken Experiment and any other third parties mentioned in our content. Modification of the materials or use of the materials for any other purpose is a violation of Gedanken Experiment's, its affiliates', or its third-party information providers' copyrights and other proprietary rights. Nothing contained herein shall be construed as conferring by implication, estoppel, or otherwise, any license or right under any copyright, patent, trademark, or other proprietary interest of Gedanken Experiment, its affiliates, or any third party, except as expressly set forth herein. 02-13-2007