First things first - The facts of the matter are simple: - English football (aka soccer) will NEVER overtake baseball, basketball or US football as the preferred sport of North Americans. As a matter of fact, soccer won't even overtake ice hockey. If anyone cares to take a bet on the opposite point of view, I will be glad to take your money....
The established US sports league's such as the NFL, MLB, NBA & NHL have long, colorful and legendary histories carved into the American psyche - sporting names like Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Michael Jordan, Johnny Unitas & Joe Namath hold special places in the hearts of US sports fans that are not about to be exchanged for a few British citizens who have flown in from "across the pond" for a money making holiday. Plus, their is too many dollars at stake to let a latecomer to the US sporting party start diverting away all those multi-billion dollar revenue streams. And glamor boy David Beckham's expensive signing with LA Galaxy is a headline grabbing publicity stunt for C-grade celebrities, wannabees, try-hards and other party-goers to flounce around with David and his pencil thin wife Victoria in Hollywood, but the US market is a lot bigger than just one city on the West Coast.
The author of this book, Dougie Brimson, an ex-member of a notorious English firm (hooligan gang) makes some interesting comments regarding behaviour, however his logic is off the mark about the potential for soccer violence in the USA. The USA posseses' its own street gang problems in most major cities - but ironically in a country where nearly 70 million handguns lie in private hands, and homicide rates heavily outstrip most other Western countries - sporting crowds in the United States are generally well behaved and opposing fans are not locked into seperate caged zones, monitored by dozens of CCTV units, or herded between stadiums and public transport depots by armies of police. Whilst many US street gangs during the 1980's adopted the colors of some well known US universities as their badge of membership or war, this did not translate into these gangs attending sporting events for the purpose of inciting violence with opposition supporters. Soccer hooliganism (aka "The English Disease") is extremely unlikely be a major issue in the USA, because soccer will remain a fringe sport in the USA, in the same way US football is a novelty sport in the United Kingdom. Want further proof that the Americans don't necessarily follow major UK trends - then cast your mind back to the mid-1970's and the worldwide explosion in the UK phenomenon of "punk" music and the associated lifestyle - where didn't "punk" take off ?? The United States - Why ? Because the British working class anger & rebellion that was behind the emergence and rapid rise of punk music / lifestyles was very different to the sentiment amongst the American working class, and hence a collective chord was not struck. Thus, "punk" simply remained a short lived fad in the USA.
The facts clearly show that soccer hooliganism is predominantly confined to being a European, African, Middle Eastern & South American pestilence perpetrated by mainly working class hoodlums, or manipulative individuals spreading racial & political hatred. Soccer violence in many European countries is plainly an extension of ongoing government instabilities, political, religious & military clashes and bitter rivalries dating back hundreds of years over which country owns which chunk of land - these issues are simply not present in the continental United States. If you examine the emerging popularity of soccer in Asia ( China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Phillipines etc), you will observe that the region is thankfully quite free of organised crowd violence - because once again the Asian history / political climate / psyche / attitude is very different to Europeans and South Americans.
All sports fans can only hope that law enforcement groups globally continue to work to eradicate the most violent sports fans on the planet - the soccer hooligans. |
March of the Hooligans: Soccer's Bloody Fraternity Books In Print, Audio Books.