Eastern European Hooliganism Takes A Life

By: chris | September 29th, 2009

Sickly, twistedly, inexplicably, this should not surprise anyone. In fact it rather has a slight air of inevitability about it. And were this a compatriot, a Russian on Russian attack or a Serbian on Serbian manslaughter, the grasp of the story might have slight limits. But it didn’t, and it doesn’t.

Brice Taton, a French man who supports the football club Toulouse, has spent the last few weeks hanging to life by a thread. Today, the last fibers of that thread drifted apart, and Brice died of his injuries at the age of 28. The story is that he was beaten severely by a number of Partizan Belgrade fans before a tie, and that story can be told by the photographs of his injuries while still alive.

The significance is, of course, that this is a life. But the supplementary significance comes in that this was a foreign life, a traveling fan who was gang beaten in a bar by at least 11 people before a Europa League match. Serbia’s history of football-violence is well-documented, a violence which acquired a tragically strong and stable foundation through the strife of civil war, and that this happened in Belgrade, a mecca for hooliganism, is no surprise.

If we were to sit down with Michel Platini, many of the same sentiments would be echoed: something must be done, but how does punishing the clubs, those under jurisdiction, for acts based on one-sided loose association outside of the stadium achieve anything? Emptying the stadiums is certainly something, but it only works for the inability to control one’s fans inside the confines of responsibility. To do so for incidents at a bar down the street is to punishment the financial department for acts out of their control.

I have long had a theory, one the clubs will scoff at, but one I think is the way forward for the sport, be it in Eastern Europe, South America or the Antarctic: downgrade the importance of football. It, as a sport, is far too ingrained in far too many cultures; identity is far too often associated with allegiances, such as those which saw Brice Taton lose his life. Through this it leaks into the powder kegs of world tranquility – politics, religion, race, etc. – and becomes an explosive bit of tinder. And all this despite it being a measly sport; a bunch of grown men kicking a little ball about. So maybe it’s time we started treating it as such. Pull down the posters, take the shirts off the shelves, remove the television advertisements and turning the sporting experience into precisely what it should be: casual.

The catch comes in giving people what they want, and most people want an enveloping football culture; but if you asked Brice Taton what he would like, I suspect he’d tell you he wants his life back.