`Preparations have been made. The fire brigade has been doing exercises . . . The police have been doing exercises. . . We feel that every precaution that should have been taken has been taken . . . We have to rely on the green light we have received from the people involved. They are professionals: the fire brigade, the police, the Ministry of the Interior. . ."
Taken out of context, the above quote might sound like the NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea, warning about a bombing mission over Yugoslavia more than a year ago. In fact, the speaker is Belgium's Euro 2000 football championships spokesman, Jan de Grave, answering questions this week on the Belgian authorities' ability to handle any violent disturbances generated by the England v Germany match in Charleroi next Saturday, just one of 31 matches due to be played by July 2nd at the Euro 2000 finals in Belgium and Holland.
It is that time of year again - well, once every two years - - when a major football tournament generates more interest as a "law and order" issue than as a sports event. It is that time of the sports season when commentators find themselves reporting that the local police forces (80,000 Dutch and Belgian personnel) go into the tournament armed with CS gas and guns, backed by water cannon and a "zero tolerance" philosophy that allows them to arrest fans "on suspicion" in and around a football stadium and dispatch them to heavy-duty cells.
As the Euro 2000 championships kick off today in Brussels, it would seem divine intervention is needed to ensure that a football competition which brings together English, German, Turkish and Dutch fans can pass off without serious violence.
The professionals fear the worst. Nine out of 10 Dutch policemen surveyed in a recent poll believe Euro 2000 will be marred by fan violence. The English National Federation of Football Supporters' spokesman, Ian Todd, put it simply this week, saying it was "inevitable that there will be trouble".
Football violence is an ongoing, worldwide phenomenon. Two weeks ago a 17year-old Peruvian fan was killed by a rocket flare at a league match in Lima. Last month three Liberian fans were killed, allegedly due to overcrowding, during a World Cup qualifier in Monrovia.
From UEFA's viewpoint the recent events in Istanbul and Copenhagen present much more cause for concern. The deaths of two English football fans, allegedly knifed by rival Turkish fans before a UEFA Cup game in Istanbul in early April, sounded a chilling warning.
When Turkish and English fans clashed again in Copenhagen last month the message was coming through: there could be serious problems at Euro 2000.
One of the key promotional phrases of the last European Championship finals in England in 1996 was "Football is Coming Home", in reference to the fact that England first developed association football and taught it to the rest of the world, long remaining the dominant maestro.
The motto for Euro 2000 might well be "Football Hooliganism Is Coming Home". The competition formally opens when Belgium play Sweden today in the Stade Roi Baudouin, a revamped Heysel Stadium, scene of arguably the most infamous European tragedy, when 39 mainly Italian fans were killed in rioting before the Juventus v Liverpool European Cup final of May 1985.
If British "fans" - at this point the inverted comas are obligatory - started the football hooliganism ball rolling, they soon found themselves being imitated, all too effectively. Among the most adept students have been the Germans and the Dutch.
While Dutch fans have never been known to cause problems at an international tournament, domestic rivalry between clubs like Feyenoord of Rotterdam and Ajax of Amsterdam has often prompted serious violence. On one famous occasion a couple of seasons ago, the Feyenoord and Ajax fans contacted one another by mobile phone, agreeing to meet at a car-park far from the heavy police presence around Rotterdam's De Kuip stadium. The net result was fan warfare, resulting in a death.
While the France '98 World Cup was, negatively speaking, most memorable for the street fighting involving English fans in Marseilles, the single most reprehensible fan act came in Lens, where a group of German fans isolated a French policeman and beat him so badly (with iron bars, among other things) that he suffered life-threatening, seemingly permanent brain damage.
Given the above track records, the idea of Turkish, German, English and Dutch fans congregating in the small space of two of Europe's most accessible countries can only prompt gloomy predictions.
The forecasters of gloom argue that if you take the English "hooligan" element out of the equation, then there is some chance that the tournament might pass off peacefully. To that end, both supporters' club spokesman Todd and the British shadow home secretary, Ann Widdecombe, this week called for the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, to ban known "hooligan elements" (as defined by the British National Criminal Intelligence Service) from travelling to Belgium and Holland.
Mr Straw seemed sympathetic to the request but declined to impose such a preemptive ban on grounds of civil liberties (notwithstanding the fact that German authorities have reportedly banned over 2,500 German fans from travelling). Explaining his decision this week, he inadvertently outlined the fundamental problem posed by football hooliganism in a democratic society, saying:
"You can't withdraw the passports of people just because you've got intelligence that they are football hooligans but they haven't got a conviction".
Over the next three weeks, the good burghers of Amsterdam, Arnhem, Bruges, Brussels, Charleroi, Eindhoven, Liege and Rotterdam may have grievous reason to disagree.
pagnew@aconet.it
