Commentary: Peace Soccer Match ends up not so Peaceful

By: Jan | July 5th, 2007

There is currently a post up on our Offside main page about “A football match organised to promote non violence among fans (…)” that ended in a brawl. It quotes a short news story from Ananova.com.

Anti-hooligan match ends in punch-up

A football match organised to promote non violence among fans in Germany ended in a mass punch-up.

Five fans were arrested at the game which was staged in Aachen as part of a police campaign against hooliganism.

The violence started when five young players attacked a heckler who was kicked and punched to the ground, and then other players and fans waded in.

A police spokesman said: “We had thought this game would show local kids that sport was a meaningful way of spending their spare time.”

To make it short, there is more wrong than right about this story, and I felt the need to clear some things up. I don’t know which source they used to write this piece. There are similarly short articles available in the German press and then there is a long more informative press release by Aachen’s police (the formatting isn’t handled properly by Google Translate, sorry). In any case I guess they simply spiced up the facts a bit and invented the rest.

The match was part of a campaign dubbed “Sports instead of Violence”. It’s not specifically targeted at hooliganism or fans. It was initiated way back in 1998, following positive experiences with similar approaches in the US. The idea is to keep some of the city’s sports halls open at night during the weekend giving young adults/teenagers the chance to play football matches against each other. Especially those who don’t play or can’t afford to play at club level. The aim is to train social skills through sports and offer alternative weekend activities. What is true is that five players attacked a fan on the sideline. The five team mates had started to play increasingly dirty and aggressive and the fan urged them to cool down. One of the players politely told the 24 year old to “shut the f*#! up” just to send a punch into his direction shortly afterwards. His team mates joined the fight and then fled from the ground (a gymnasium of a high school). No mass-punch up with other fans and players joining in. Nobody has been arrested yet. The police is still hunting down the five players. The quote from the police spokesman is completely made up as well. It was the first incident since the project was started nine years ago. That’s also the reason why the police so far reduced their presence at the grounds to infrequent visits and left the rest to the coaches.

Sorry to be so nit-picky here. The irony still remains somewhat intact anyway. The bizarre love triangle of football, fans and violence usually produces enough real stories you can report about. No need to blow the other stuff out of proportion and context.

Anyway, once Ananova returns to reporting about how a player gets traded for a couple of sausages, I’m gladly willing to ignore the facts again.