Is UEFA Ignoring Fan Violence?

By: Daryl | May 14th, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wp2GBsj-LQ

The good people at 101 Great Goals are branching out into investigative journalism this week, and may have uncovered something. Seems there was more to the Polish Cup final than UEFA are letting on.

It’s true enough that Legia Warsaw beat Wisla Krakow 4-3 on penalties after a 0-0 draw, but UEFA’s match report seems to pretend that the crowd violence at the cup final (above) didn’t actually happen.

I want to give UEFA writer Pawel Dimow the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was only asked to report the result or maybe Dimow’s editor thought the violence wasn’t relevant.

Certainly there wasn’t a great deal of in-depth coverage from any of the other major news outlets. For example, the Reuters report reads like this, from beginning to end:

May 13 (Reuters) – Polish Cup final result on Tuesday Wisla Krakow 0 Legia Warsaw 0 (Legia Warsaw win 4-3 on penalties).

But the violence at today’s UEFA Cup final in Manchester – where a Zenit fan was apparently stabbed and Rangers fans turned on police after the Piccadilly Gardens screen malfunctioned – isn’t being mentioned on UEFA’s site at time of writing either. Maybe that sort of thing doesn’t sit well with sponsors?

But just because it’s not reported doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. So if UEFA are serious about curbing crowd violence, maybe a good start would be stop pretending it doesn’t exist.

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Category: Europe

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Ian Rose

Nowhere above did I call any of this reasonable. Also it might have nothing to do with any of this anthropological hooey and might just be because they were pissed drunk.
Laurie

Because we are so impressed when we see you blasted by water cannons to calm you down. :-)
Ian Rose

Yeah - I have to agree with chris - even though men can do awful things, we often do them with the misguided goal of impressing a girl / woman. Not that it's your fault - but I'd hardly call your influence "civilizing".
Matt

chris-Touche. :D

Rangers fans causing trouble? Me, Celtic, the city of Barcelona, and 1972 are just shocked...
chris

Helen of Troy begs to differ.
Laurie

Look at the crowd shots in the video. How many women do you see? I saw zero. Literally, none.

There's your problem right there.

We are a civilizing influence.
chris

UEFA isn't the most in-depth and they do often skirt around certain issues. Violence - even player violence - is often one of them. On some levels you can understand it, on others it seems sketchy.