40 Killed in Clashes After Egypt Soccer Match

My prediction is that twice that many will be killed in automobile accidents this Sunday driving to and from Superbowl Parties.

At least dying in the name of professional sports will lead to an amusing eulogy.

Rap

I'm endlessly curious what it is about soccer outside of the states that regularly compels its fans to physically beat each other - at times to the point of death.

It can't really be just about the sport, can it?

Simply more evidence that these folks are just like you and me.

Ya... Cause it would take a miracle for them to stampede the local Walmart...

First of all, the very rare "stampedes" at retail stores in the West don't kill almost 100 hundred people, and injure hundreds more.

Secondly, this wasn't a stampede. It was an aggressive, violent riot.

Death and injury were the intent of the rioters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/01/us-egypt-soccer-disasters-idUSTRE8102EL20120201
Here you go, a list of similar stadium deaths. Ironically, most of them didn't happen in arab land.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10753448
Here's one that happened during a "love march" in Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Chicago_riots
Here's one that happened in the USA. Probably pretty violent...

why is that ironic?

Yup, thumb 'em down. Great response. Why don't you just admit you're a racist?

The irony is, stampedes can happen any where, but Finn, as per normal, show his stripes.

Again, this was a stampede, not a riot and hundreds weren't killed or injured by violent attackers.

But maybe I was wrong in drawing the distinction between Egypt and the West. Better that I limited it to Egypt vs The US.

Keep searching for a similar catastrophe in America or even Canada.

Even the Canuk Cup riots in Vancouver pale in comparison to this Egyptian atrocity.

We're all the same. We all value life just the same. We all care the same for civility and rule of law.

Yeah right.

Who is this reply directed towards?

The irony is that you perceive irony.

The Egyptian disaster was not a stampede, it was a massive act of intentional violence.

If you want to compare it to riots in Detroit and LA, be my guest.

Soccer fans are called hooligans for a reason...
The Riots in Vancouver were also started by people up to no-good. They were very lucky no one was killed.

If we look at the list of (real) football related massacres, they tend to happen when a society is full of anger and frustration, as if the steamer is blocked and explodes.
This seems to be the case in Egypt, were tensions have not dwindled very much since the ousting of Mubarak. In fact, the rioters of Port Said are being accused now of being pro-Mubarak provocateurs.
It also has to do with some lack of authority. It is known now that, before the game, death menaces ran amok in the web, mostly on Twitter, and nothing was done to prevent the tragedy.

The ensuing political clashes proved that I was right.

One thing that is difficult for Americans to understand is that, in other parts of the world, a sport team allegiance is often linked to class, religion, politics, even race.
For example, in Peru, the team Alianza de Lima is followed mostly by the black (Afro-Peruvian?) population, while Sporting Crystal is more middle class.
In London football, Chelsea is kind of posh, while Tottenham Hotspur and WestHam are working class.
In Glasgow, Scotland, Celtic is the team for Catholics, while Rangers is the team for Protestants: one of the biggest football-related tragedies was a fight between the followers of those teams in the early 70s.
In Rome, Roma is the team for the left-wingers and Lazio is the team for the right wingers, fascist salute from some players and all.
Compared to this, the Red Sox- Yankees animosity is child's play.

Football has traditionally been a working class pastime, and it's one of the few areas where large numbers of working class men meet up. There's always going to be some animosity, but some people just want to push it too far. In Southampton our main rivals are Portsmouth, they call us scum, we call them skates (because they have sex with fish). Whenever there's a local derby there's always trouble, even though both sets of fans are usually well behaved. Due to intelligent policing, this doesn't normally amount to much.

Hooliganism came to a head in England following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disaster

Since then there has been a real push to get hooliganism out of football. A lot of troublemakers have been banned from football matches altogether, and others have to surrender their passports whenever there is an International match. There has been a push to make football more family friendly, and as a result things really have improved dramatically.

That's not to say the thugs have gone away, but they fight away from the grounds, and there's not the crowds that there used to be. Gary Oldman's film The Firm is a really good examination of the mindset of a hooligan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firm_(1989_film)

One thing in particular about Egypt, is that they're still not a democracy, they've been living under a dictatorship for a long time. They've still to truly recognise the difference bitween democracy and chaos. Look at the rioting in Iraq after Saddam fell, that prompted Rumsfeld's infamous '**** happens,' remark.