THERE are hundreds of millions of football fans around the world who support international clubs, such as Benfica and Manchester United, with the same fervor as their own local teams. At its highest level, football has become a multi-billion dollar game in which top flight players earn fabulous sums. While the big money may be a reflection of the international importance of soccer, it has also been criticized for driving sportsmanship out of the game. Players regularly fake injuries to gain free kicks and often treat each other on the pitch with disrespect and even violence. Sociologists have suggested that it is the megabucks which have become tied up in top-level football that have produced violently partisan behavior by fans. Moreover, supporters copy the on-pitch bad manners and deplorable conduct of some of the players they so revere. This could apply to Egypt's premier league teams and their followers where players' earnings, though generally modest by European standards, are often fabulous in the eyes of local fans. However, something more sinister may have been at work to cause the almost year-long suspension of all Egyptian league games. This ban by the Egyptian football authorities acting in concert with the Interior Ministry followed the appalling riot at the Port Said Stadium when 74 Al-Ahly fans and police were killed in fights with Al-Masry supporters. Egyptian football spectators have long had an unenviable reputation for violence. Normally, top league matches are heavily patrolled by police. However last February, following on from the revolution, police kept a low profile allowing rival supporters to run riot. Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, then head of Egypt's ruling army council, condemned the violence and went to greet the shocked Al-Ahly team when they returned to Cairo. Yet there remained suspicions that the shameful violence had been brought about by agents provocateurs and a deliberate absence of policing in order for the military to demonstrate that it needed to take a firmer hand. Now, after three previous attempts were abandoned because of security fears, Egyptian premier league football is due to restart at the beginning of next month. Unfortunately, the omens still do not look good. Last week Al-Masry fans in Port Said turned on students they believed to be Al-Ahly supporters. Whoever was behind this latest outbreak of pointless aggression may be seeking to ensure that when Egypt's five top clubs once again begin to fight on the pitch for dominance of the Premier League, there will also be blood flowing in the stands and on the streets. Such further outrages would add to the growing climate of fear and uncertainty brought about by the political standoff between President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood and opposition forces. Surely one way to restore Egyptian football to what it should be, a game of skill and nothing more nor less, is to have the thousands of decent fans, who want to watch a game not a disgusting riot, patrol the stands and the streets detaining violent, so-called fans and handing them over to the police. All weapons, including knives, should be banned from stadia and metal detectors installed on every turnstile. Anyone who tries to enter with any sort of weapon should be subjected to immediate arrest. Moreover the present, woefully inadequate closed circuit television systems in and around football grounds must be beefed up and properly monitored. As Europe has demonstrated with its own football thugs, only tough and uncompromising action can stop the troublemakers.
