The game behind the game

This news isn’t late. After all, there’s a war on.

The topic isn’t Iraq, however, or Afghanistan or perhaps a half-dozen other clandestine wars being fought by the Arbusto clan. No, i write of something smaller, though no less idiotically evil and covered by the press with such humorously paranoid headlines.

Today’s post: a few notes about Poland’s lovely hooligans.

The Sunday Mirror of a couple of weeks ago was this writer’s favorite thus far by far. Under the screaming headline POLISH SOCCER THUGS WORLD CUP THREAT runs the clever statement “We’ll hunt England fans and attack them with meat cleavers.”
Whether title of or quote within the story, you gotta love colorful mode of expression…

Reads the piece: “German police have uncovered plans for a month of drug-fuelled violence by Polish hooligans during the tournament in June.” Meanwhile, British bobbies fear for the well-being of “travelling England fans,” whom they see as targets for the Poles.

Writers Bob Graham and Justin Penrose defend the Empire, however, ensuring the public know that England actually houses the world’s “worst hooligans.” And with zest and details, they report that “Polish hooligans will be carrying knives, axes, meat cleavers, baseball bats and three foot-long rubber truncheons filled with sand.”

The most brilliant bit? From the Mirror:

A hooligan league has been set up to find out who is the “best of the worst” by European thugs who are in daily contact by text, internet and mobile phone. Many of them are linked to organised crime and admit to taking drugs before fights.

Give a monkey an ADSL connection…

(Hey, can money be made on this? Can we make a fantasy league or something?)

Alongside the Brits and Poles, you’ve got to like the hometown Germans’ chances are well. They know the pitch, they know the towns, their active minds are just as small.

In a desperate bid to bring their story back within the realm of political correctness, Graham and Penrose then begin painting tender pictures of Polish hooligans. One Grzegorz Piatkowski gets a fair number of column inches with quotes like:

“I see … the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war…”

O, sorry. That’s Fight Club. Piatkowski actually says:

“After every game there is fighting,” he said. “It is part of the game, it is something we enjoy. It makes us all feel closer, we stand beside one another and we fight with our friends because it makes us stronger. We hate the fans from other clubs, just as they hate us, that’s why we fight – to hurt each other.”
In the piece, police inspector Zbigniew Matwiej, clearly the victim of half-ass translation, said: “We know there are many hooligans, perhaps 500 who are very active and aggressive, with another 1,500 to 2,000 who are really bad. And there are many, many more who take part.”

Again sounding like a true officer of the law, Matwiej went on to pass the buck: “At the moment there’s nothing we can do. This is not for the police, it is for the government and the justice department.”

Not for the police, eh? Well, in a pre-Cup matchup recently, some fifty-four cops fell at the hands of the hooligans, including thirty hospitalized. That story is here, complete with another lovely (doubtlessly perceived as “witty”) British newspaper headline.

Meanwhile, over at another bastion of the marvels of “free press,” The Times Online, The “Polish hooligan army” plans “to invade World Cup.”

Jumping right into the sensationalism, Roger Boyes makes sure that all know neo-Nazis are leading the “hard core of violent Polish fans.” In addition to mentioning those terrible Brit hooligans, Boyes also gets in mention of the Dutch as bad boys.

And then Boyes lets himself get lost in purple prose as he describes the subject of his interview:
“It will be the battle for Berlin,” Andrzej said, with a crooked, toothy grin. Clasping a can of beer and singing obscene anthems, he is one of the estimated 250,000 Polish supporters who will be travelling to Germany next month, with or without a ticket.

“Only about five per cent of the fan community are really hooligans,” Poznan supporter club head Jaroslaw Kilinski is hilariously quoted as saying. “The Germans are exaggerating the problem.” Now, wait. What does Kilinski mean here? When he says “only about five percent,” how does he get that figure? And does that “only” indicate his disappointment? Are there others who are just pretend hooligans, as opposed to those who are “really” hooligans?

Naturally, since this is a sports story, this must be statistics. Calling up the calculator function on his laptop, Boyes figures that:

… 5 per cent of 250,000 adds up to more than 12,000 thugs, enough to change the balance of the hooligan problem during the World Cup. By comparison, 100,000 England fans are expected, with more than 3,000 forced to stay at home under banning orders.

And finally, not to be outdone by any English-language media paranoia-stirring, the Germans are also getting into the act. Fox, long since known for sober reportage and helping swing the 2000 U.S. presidential election, made sure to give prominence to an AP report informing a country that is mostly lacking in direct experience with hooligans (hey, they’ve got guns over there) that:

Respected German TV station ZDF has an article about Polish hooligans psyching themselves up for weeks by screaming slogans like “Revenge for WWII” or “blood to the Germans.” Thousands plan to cross the border to Germany, the report states, with only about 500 identifiable by police.

And msnbc online referenced a story from last November in which “30 Germans and 55 Poles were arrested after a brawl in a forest near the countries’ border.”

In the forest? What are these guys, ewoks?

I have to tell you, i love this sort of news reporting. If anyone digs up anything on foreign reportage of hooliganism, please send it this way.

As for the hooligans themselves, yeah, i read Fever Pitch and ostensibly they’re actual real people sometimes blah blah blah, but come on. Isn’t there anything better these warmongering no-lifers could be doing? Maybe the powers-that-be should ship these guys out wholesale to, o, i don’t know, maybe some disputed land in the Middle East or something…