How far will hooligans go? Beijing unafraid at Summer Olympian

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How far will hooligans go? Beijing unafraid

Posted May 1, 2008 at 10:00 AM by Os Davis

Section: Beijing 2008, Events, Soccer, Featured Writers, Os Davis

olympic logo soccer The unfortunately-titled official statement “China not fear of football hooligans at Olympic Games” was released by the state press agency earlier this month, marking the first such official statement on soccer’s biggest international problem.

Beijing Organizational Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) representative Lin Weiguo intrepidly commented that “overseas football hooligans” would be kept away from the events, citing experience in such matters gained in hosting “the FIFA Women’s World Cup and other international football events.”

Such experience aside, the Olympics may be a far cry from the international men’s game. Hardly breaking a cybersweat with a search or two online brings up stories like these:

• Professional futsal match broken up by fans throwing flares, hooligans assault Czech national coach

• In Nicosia, three men attacked by balaclava-clad hooligan gang wielding bats and pickaxes

• Brick-throwing Brit hooligans banned for three years

• Hundreds of hooligans attack visiting team

• Twenty-three arrested in preemptive crackdown

• Australian foreign minister compares Olympic Torch protestors to hooligans

And that’s just in the past two weeks.

Certainly China will have few problems with hardcore European hooliganism, what with the great distance to be traveled, airport security, and mere sheer organized firepower. Take a look at what Russia has ready for any of the expected 50,000 Brits coming into Moscow for the Champions League final on May 21; surely, Chinese security forces will be attentive to these efforts in preparing Beijing.

Uzis or no, there’s no way the gangs’ll go down without a fight (so to speak). After all, this is the 21st century, and today internationally traveling hooligans are as wired as you and me. And they have been for a long time.

As for China’s problems with hooliganism internally, the news is – as with most reportage out of the big country – a bit murky. Wikipedia has Chinese football hooliganism mostly down to “accusations of corrupt refereeing, with Chinese football being plagued by allegations of match fixing in the early 2000s.”

A particular low point, and one that naturally led to official statements filled with finality, came in 2000 after a match which could have led to one team’s promotion.

Lowest of the low, though, blew up in July 2004. Three months before Asia Cup final, Chinese media was dubbing the forthcoming China-Japan championship match “explosive” and playing up the World War II invasion angle. (And you thought American-style sports hype was bad.)

After a 3-1 Japan win in Beijing, rioters ran amok while burning flags and destroying property up to and including that of Japanese Embassy officials. Some 5,000 police were required to quell the nationalism-fueled mob.

For the city of Beijing, round two starts this summer. The haters will be multilingual and organized; security will be ready. Word has it there may even be some soccer, too.