Soccer wars

It's funny how teams adopt the terms of abuse as nicknames.

The hated Palmeiras are "porco" and, well, now they chant it to their team and it's their mascot.

Oops! I never thought about that.

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As for teams with self-derogatory nicknames, perhaps the most important one is Real Madrid, the "Meringues" (which had the original meaning of "Sissies").

Re: the Central-American "soccer war" Walter referenced -- it'd be interesting to compile instances in which soccer played a catalyst role in (political) conflict. I am sure I heard about another case in which it practically triggered a war, but I can't remember it.

I do remember - MOU, do you know more? - that fans of a certain Serbian soccer club played an important role in rallying nationalist fever and support for Seselj's SRS in 1990, 1991, ahead of the war. And that a turning point in Croatian politics came when supporters of a certain club that had played a pivotal role in whipping up war fever and support for Tudjman's HDZ and the radical HSP, started chanting anti-government slogans five, six years ago.

It was also at a soccer game, I believe I remember from a documentary, that a Polish young man set himself on fire in political protest after the 1980 clampdown. The game was broadcast live but the cameras were quickly turned away from the smoke, while the game continued, and the story was basically left forgotten/represssed until after '89. (I distinctly remember a similar story from Hungary, too).

But I'm getting off-topic.

What about a counter-example, though? Soccer as a "bridge" for transnational identification? Have you heard about the latest political drive of Thai Prime Minister (and millionaire) Thaksin?

Thaksin apparently is driving a nation-wide people's campaign to buy the British soccer team Liverpool FC. British football is hysterically popular in Thailand. In a genius bit of political self-promotion, Thaksin decided he would, instead of just try to buy the club with his own money, set up a national lottery of sorts, through which every Thai could contribte to the Thai people's campaign to collectively become owners of Liverpool FC. Apparently, its a great success and Liverpool owners and supporters are getting quite qeasy.

Same thing happened with our arch-enemy in College (American) Football, the National Politechnical Institute (IPN).
A donkey is the (universal?) symbol of stupidity and of bad students.

Perhaps you are thinking of the Honduras/Salvador Football War.

On youth games ... last month a big scandal involved the youth game between Ajax and Feyenoord, the two main national rivals here.
Youth games normally dont attract all that much public, and definitely no masses of hooligans. So security measures were minimal. But this time there were a lot of supporters.

At the end of the game, when one team lost, the supporters of the other team raged onto the actual field and started kicking and beating the team. They literally had to run towards the players' tunnel, but several didnt make it. One was slammed with his head against a concrete wall and was dangerously hurt ...

Crazy stuff ...

No, that was the one Walter already mentioned

Ah, I hadn't seen that. I don't recall any others that actually got pinned on a game (though there might have been influencing factors from games).

This is the fastest soccer thread in the history of A2K.

Now, getting into nimh's terrain, wasn't Steua Bucuresti the team of the Ceaucescu family. They say no referee would dare make a mistake against Steua.

There' have been other regime's teams: Juventus, for Fascist Italy; Real Madrid, for Franco's Spain...

One of the Moscow team's was the KGB's ... but another was the Party's, I believe, so the referees must have been a bit nervous about games between 'em :wink:

One of Budapest's teams was also hated for being associated with either the secret service or the Party apparatus. Probably one in every communist country, eh?

Fat moving-thread indeed! LOL



We have word for that in Dutch: "geuzennaam". Was actually surprised not to find an English-language equivalent in the dictionary.

Its cause the first Dutch freedom-fighters (or whatever), back in the xth century, were pejoratively called "geuzen" by their enemies - and then adopted the name in pride.

About the Soccer War of 1969.

The official pretext of the war was boundaries. The true pushing force behind it were interest groups in both Honduras and El Salvador, trying to abort the creation of the Central American Common Market. Football World Cup qualyfiers were used by the media and the government, in both sides, to exploitate popular anger. [Both countries are small and poor and used to losing in sports; their fans retort to every possible scheme to make visiting teams unconfortable].

The war lasted 100 hours, a truce came and war officially ended as a definition of boundaries was determined by an International Court in 1992. Honduras won 2/3 of the claimed territory. They say 5,000 people died. I believe the sum is wildly exaggerated.

The defining game was won by El Salvador, and their team came to the '70 World Cup, only to be whipped by the Belgium, Mexico and USSR.

The last day of the Soccer War was the same day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

Confused Seselj with Arkan (of "Arkan's Tigers", the murderous gang that wrecked havoc in Bosnia etc), who "had been the leader of Delije, the official fan club of Belgrade's Red Star soccer team".

Found that in an article that seems to suggest lots of crosslinks: The Banality of "Ethnic War". Also notes that the Rwandan Hutus' Interahamwe "had its genesis in soccer fan clubs" too.

Interesting nexus, war and soccer. There's stories of heroism, too, such as this Ukrainian one about the war-time Dynamo Kiev team - shot collectively after winning one game against the Germans too much.

(There's also the famous one about the - I'm guessing from memory, Saddam-era Iraqi? - national team, whose players were brought to prison and tortured every time they lost a game.)

This month's Kurd-Arab riots in Syria were first sparked off during a soccer game, too, apparently. (Found another news story on that here, which confused me for a moment because in the first paragraph it says "in Northern Iraq" when the rest of it is about Syria).

In 1566 some nobles presented a petition requesting relaxation of edicts and ordinances against Calvinists and other Protestants. These petitors became being nicknamed GEUZEN (beggars), a name the Dutch rebels soon afterward bore with honour. [Actually, during the audience in Margaret's palace in Brussels, one of her advisers refered, in French, to the Dutch nobles as 'gueux': beggars.]

See? Only one thing that could bring Craven, Walter, fbaezer and me together in a thread: soccer! ;-)

Apropos Dutch history: we should start a war to regain the (1830) borders of the German Federation: thus, the Dutchy of Limburg would be German - and Aachen (Aken, Aix-la-Chapelle) could easily play their forthcoming UEFA-matches in Kerkrade :wink:

Oh you can have Limburg!

Teams playing there lousy anyway ;-)



(just kidding ... Roda JC used to be one of my favourite clubs. Pity its never going anywhere ...)

nimh, yeah you are mostly right. Supporters of Red Star Belgrade were actually lead by Arkan, notorius war criminal that was later killed in street shooting in Belgrade (mob shooting) and world was shocked by pictures of his "soldiers" kicking body of dead Muslim woman in Bijeljina, Bosnia.
In ex-Yugoslavia there was term "Big Four", refering to soccer teams Red Star and Partizan from Belgrade, Serbia, and Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split from Croatia. All four teams had many supporters and strong hooligan groups, however, Partizan and Hajduk had "just" hooligans, without nationalistic prefix.
Supporters of Dinamo were chanting for HDZ and Tudjman before first elections, but they are best known for their behaviour on friendly game Yugoslavia-Holland before WC90, played in Zagreb. Although Dinamo was excellent this season not a single player was called to national squad so on that game they came in thousands, maybe 10,000 of them and they loudly supported Holland and verbally attacking yugoslavian players. Funny part is that their main symbol were orange jackets and that croatian flags back then were similar to dutch (they cut off the red stars /all yugoslav republics had to have red star on flag) so they looked exactly as dutch flags) and it was actually funny to hear dutch players after the game
"We had no idea that there are so much Dutch tourists in Yugoslavia", "We are happy that our fans turned out in such big number, but we apologize for their whistling to yugoslavian anthem", etc...

As for other yugoslav hooligans, in late 80's it was almost like in South America, all teams had hooligan groups - one of the smallest groups was United Force, supporters of Rad Belgrade - they are serbian skinheds and nazis and they were fighting everyone including other teams from Belgrade (because of their communist names - Red Star and Partizan) and after one game they beat Roma kid (14 years old I think) to death.
In Croatia worst city was Vinkovci. They almost haven't had real supporters group but whoever came to Vinkovci all city was after them. Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, doesn't matter...hooligans, policemen, "average" citizens, everybody was beating supporters of guest team.

Today, whenever Serbs and Croats meet you know it's going to be trouble. But, fact is that despite war there is no hate between those two nations as someone would expect - someone from other countries. Serbian bands frequently play in Croatia, Croatian bands in Serbia, Serbs are coming to Adriatic during summer, theatres are working together, even on lower level sports it's almost friendly competitions today - for example, my town was under serbian rockets for four years...now every summer in Interleague our local team plays baseball against Belgrade and stadium is packed but no insults, no attacks, nothing...we even have fun together...

But when it's soccer or basketball, or some important game in other sport, that's terrible...
Lately, poor Slovenes were in trouble First they were hosts on final four of basketball Goodyear League (teams from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Maccabi Tel Aviv), and in semifinals Zadar, Croatia played against Red Star, Serbia. Serbian fans almost burned entire hall, they destroyed everything.
Few months later Croatia and Serbia played final game of European waterpolo championship, and this time Croats made mess. I think there is not a single sit left on pool complex after that game.


As for others, I think you are not fair to poor Brazilians They might be terrible, but i think noone can be compared with Argentinians. Their national championships was cancelled few times because of hooligans rioting and I think that their death toll is higher then in all world together.

Funny story, I dont remember that! So did the Dinamo supporters see the fact none of their players was selected as a kind of national putdown against Croats?

Something like ten years ago, I lived in the students flats, three, four towrblocks opposite each other. When there were World or European Championships, all hell would break loose. The biggest party. Loud music (Andre Hazes singing about "Nederland, oh Nederland") boomed on speakers dragged outside, orange streamers and Dutch flags, and if "we" won, people shooting fireworks afterwards (at each other's towerblock, that is), attempt the same with the fire extuingishers, everybody wet and rolls of toilet paper thrown out as streamers, onto the trees below. Last time rental company warned everybody, either that they werent going to clean any TP up afterwareds, or that they were going to levy a fee about it. Heh.

Background: last world championships, something like 80-85% of all Dutch watched the teams' games - a higher proportion of viewers than for any other country except the Latin-American ones and, I think, Spain and Italy. Not nationalistic? Soccer time, and everything is reversed. Like with carnival.

Anyway, Story. One time, the Dutch were thrown out in one of the rounds (quarter finals?) - against Germany, even, I think (the greatest shame). So no more Dutch games. But - semi-finals, and Denmark was facing Germany. Guess what ...

Same thing, all over! Everybody watched, shouting, whistling and all of the same scenes afterwards - because Denmark had won!

<grins>