Our hooligans are at it again !

Nothing ever changes, does it?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1259068,00.html

I`ve just seen footage of it on this mornings news.
The riot police looked far more into having a fight than most of the travelling fans.
Dreadful scenes and badly handled.

A perfect example of don't believe what you get told or see. I had the unfortunate experience of being at the Lazio vs Chelsea game in the same stadium and much the same took place. We were attacked continuously during the game with golfballs, lighters etc. with no action from the Police. Having then won the game we were kept in the Stadium for nearly two hours, there was no trouble from the Chelsea fans but we were being pushed with batons & etc with sporadic random attacks taking place against individual supporters.

We were then almost crushed on the stairwell when the Police moved from blocking the first level only to block the lower level, leading to us at the front literally not having our feet on the floor. After ten minutes the Police moved away and as we tumbled out they launched a totally unprovoked baton attack as the fans came out with the guy next to us taking a full blow across his head and blood flying out everywhere. Their response also included chasing us around the parked coaches and in one instance we rescued a supporter who had a knife held to his throat by the Police, had his wallet and money taken and then given a good kicking and thrown out.We got him back to his hotel via a cab but the scenes were like something out of a third world country.

I was with my kids on the trip and it was not at all pleasant and we only got back safely to our hotel thanks to bumping into an old friend who is an Italian Chelsea fan who managed to navigate us through the various nonsense going on. We did complain to both the Italian Embassy and UEFA but nothing ever happened. Even the late Tony Banks MP, who was there, took up the cause but quite obviously from last night, nothing appears to have changed. In some ways we were lucky as generally the Lazio fans are based in the suburbs whereas the Roma fans are in the City so there were no problems in the City in the days preceeding or following the actual match.

If the UK Police acted the same way against supporters there would be uproar but in Italy the Police are all in riot gear at the start and seem to treat the whole thing as some kind of sick sport.

Why is it always the police's fault? (They were heavy handed, etc?) If the hooligans hadn't started fighting etc - which they ALWAYS do - there would have been no need for the police, would there?

Hooligans are hooligans - and need dealing with ! If they were beaten HARDER they might (just might) start to behave in future !

You don't get it obviously, have you been there, seen it first hand? If not you shouldn't come to conclusion until you are in the know....

I'm with TerryLamps on this one ITK; I have no faith at all any more in the police and I reckon the villains in Italy, with less chance of expressing their violent side through the collapsing areas of Mafia and Cosa Nostra, now go into the Police (as the truly dodgy do everywhere - the line between villain and cop can be very thin).
You only have to look at the Italian riot police to see they were loving every second of it.

The only football match (well, soccer; I've gone to dozens of American football games and THOUSANDS of baseball games and there's never any trouble at any of them) I've ever attended was in Italy - TURIN - the World Cup when we played Germany (semi final 1994ish??).

All the fans were super (I'd scalped a German fan's unused ticket - at face value - and was smack in the middle of the German supporters; hilarious as both sides scored seeing me cheering all on my own or sitting miserable in the middle of cheering Krauts!). If you remember we lost on a final shootout. Both sides had played great. Both sets of fans were gentlemen with much English shaking German hands and saying "go kill the Argies" in the final - I think it was just after the Hand of God incident.

In my very, very limited experience, fans are 99% fine (just a few nasties) but the cops can be dodgy - and not only at football matches (try false allegations).

I`m sort of stuck in the middle on this debate.

I did think the police were appalling last night,(bang out of order) but there is still an underlying element that makes me not go to watch my team anymore, and that is some of the supporters.

It`s hardly a life threatening act down here, but there is a nasty tradition for the home "thugs" to pelt the away fans with acorns.
It hurts a bit, but mainly just starts fights, and I was most upset when my daughter was hit.

The fairly innocent seed hits you as hard as a stone, but of course, in the hands of the riot squad last night would probably be designed to explode on impact should they be given an armory of oak as well.

terrylamps wrote:
You don't get it obviously, have you been there, seen it first hand? If not you shouldn't come to conclusion until you are in the know....

Terry, what I do "get" is that there is ALWAYS trouble at football matches ! (They actually praised the fans at Euro 2004 because there were ONLY A FEW instances of rioting !!!! WFT! Has the world gone mad? There should be NO instances of rioting at all!

As long as you (and others) continue to repeatedly make excuses for these people it will go on.

As soon as the authorities clamp down properly (shoot a few perhaps?) it could be cured overnight.

More football hooligans rioting - this time the Spurs lot -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/6531683.stm

I can speak as a qualified person on this subject, i have been to that Roma stadium to watch around 5 or 6 games and had no problem whatsoever. In fact people respect the police there so much they don't even think of causing trouble.

You have to look at the Man Utd fans in this instance - Celtic went to Milan only a month or so ago - enclosure full of Italian police and not 1 arrest. newcastle went to a hotbed of trouble (Palermo) and had no problems or arrests only 2 months ago.

maybe our previous reputation of hooliganism doesnt help but i dont think the Utd fans were blameless in this case