Football Hooliganism Will Never End

Following Paris Saint-Germain’s smashing of Inter Milan in their 5-0 Champions League Final victory on Sunday, fans of the Parisian team quickly took to the streets in typical French fashion:

The beleaguerment of the French capital was an abhorrent display that symbolised a number of things. Firstly and most principally, it demonstrated that football, possibly more than any other sport, has the ability to conjure up emotions that are matched by few sports, a typical trope of the ‘beautiful game’. Or, perhaps it isn’t even football’s ability to inspire such profound feelings, but more so that its followers, more than any other sport, feel that results on the pitch then seem to justify displays of barbarity. You don’t really see this with Tennis, Cricket, Rugby or many other team sports - so it is useful to muse on why it seems football manages, so often, to inspire such vicious attacks.

As for the response from the government, roughly 5,400 riot police were deployed across Paris. These were, ultimately, futile attempts to quell the widespread desecration of the capital. The ‘city of love’ was very quickly turned into the city of violence and oppression, a genuinely sad sight to see. 

Of course, the last time a team in France won something this major was the French National Team itself back when they won the World Cup in ‘98 and the Euros in 2000. Did the French citizenry take to the streets and begin setting fire to cars and lighting fireworks in the street then? Take a look:

Seems fairly peaceful to me. Though, that is France. Maybe they weren’t always like this, but England certainly has been for a long time. In 1978, during the FA cup quarter-final between Milwall and Ipswich, a full-scale riot broke out on the terraces which spilled out into the pitch and streets below. More prominent examples include the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 and the violence that erupted before and during the European Championships Final in 2021 at Wembley. In all cases, many were injured, some even killed. But because it’s Football, it’s all in the name of the love for the game so who cares?

This is the rough attitude that many of us are guilty of holding, including public officials, when it comes to football violence. People die, people mourn, people move on. The latest throng of attacks in the French capital has epitomised that there are some things that are societally designated as too tetchy a matter to go near: those in power are aware of the consequences of tackling crass ferociousness from footie fans - harsher measures, more stringent policing etc. leading to outcry from the citizenry. We have to take a stand though; if we don’t, people keep dying.