Can School Soccer Solve the Problem of Hooliganism? A Marxist Attempt at an Answer (Martin Alsiö, Sweden)
Martin Alsiö
Sweden
Can School Soccer Solve Hooliganism? (A Marxist Attempt to Answer)
How can modern football solve hooliganism? That is one of the most important and discussed questions today, according to many people in the football establishment all from UEFA- and FA- representatives to politicians, police, academics, media and others. The approach to this problem has however been a bit different. Let’s look at what the two Johanssons, Anton & Lennart, wrote on problems with football audience.
It is with great disgust I observe that criminal and sick people can threat and harass leaders and players so that they are forced to give in or move. I am sorry for this development of society and they who’ve had the political power have been way to flat to solve the problem. We should have had the same legislation as in for instance England. Sharper legislation, tougher punishments – but back home we still sit around shit-chatting about interfering with personal integrity… (Lennart Johansson (2008), p. 84)
The big football audience’ appearance at a mayor competition can be seen as an expression for the sport culture and decency, a people has achieved. Sports want to educate its participants and its audience in all aspects of life, in an order that resembles a true sportsman. One of the goals that the Swedish FA has put up is to educate the big football audience to self-control and well awareness. Time is likely to show that the control […] and the ability and the will to righteously and neutral judge what happens on the football field, will be useful even in other parts of life. (Anton Johansson (1929), p. 23)
Both Johanssons were honorable chairmen at the Swedish FA for many years. Politically they both belonged on the right wing and they both made lots of effort to increase the commercial interest in football. They both also aimed for the post as leaders at FIFA, and ironically both failed by small margins. What differences them are 70 years of football development.
In the days of Anton Johansson there was a very popular national school tournament played in Sweden. Teams of boys within the age of 14-20 played each other. The Schools themselves used these tournaments for community-building, for creating a ‘We’ at their school, by organizing huge supporting claques traveling with their school-team around the country. They wrote cheerful and witty songs supporting their team. But in doing this, they were also very careful to not hurt the ‘Them’. The school soccer embraced a chivalry idea of supporting, where every forth or fifth song was for the opponents. By lifting both teams’ spirits the game would be between equals. This chivalry idea was ensured by dedicated teachers & principles, which censured the supporter songs before they were approved.
When Sweden in 1967 abandoned its rational amateur idea for a professional elite football played within free market laws, this also changed school soccer. The school tournament itself was dropped by the Swedish FA and the schools themselves abandoned most of their educational ideas to adjust for a more competitive production of future elite players. Before 1967 the problems with football violence were very random and almost every audience group known were focusing on supporting their team.
After professional football within free market laws was introduced in Sweden in 1967, it didn’t take long for audience to criticize the new inequality in Allsvenskan. An organized group of football supporters following IFK Göteborg tried to stop a game against Örebro SK in 1970 to avoid relegation. The football establishment soon labeled this as the first act of football hooliganism in Sweden. As the school soccer tournament later was dropped, many of the school claques moved from the school teams to club teams. With no teachers left to educate them, no adult supporter clubs who wanted to involve them – the young football audience of the 1970:s had no other choice but to take care of themselves and form their own groups.
In the days of Lennart Johansson these football followers are labeled as “criminal and sick people” who “threat and harass” by the football establishment. Another way to attack these audience groups is by accusing them of not being true football-lovers, but only interested in the violence.
The historian Karl Marx would probably not have agreed on the football establishment’s perception of football violence. Perhaps he would have pointed out that of all the millions of football clubs around the world, the only ones attracting violent football fans are the ones playing professional soccer within free market laws, where huge crowds experience huge expectations and huge frustrations depending on their favorite team’s progress. Maybe he’d even argue that it is the inequality between professional teams in a competitive free market system that creates the frustration and the violence itself.
School soccer played in the chivalry idea of Anton Johansson, could probably even today be a powerful tool to educate a gentle but highly dedicated football audience. But it will not take away the fundamental inequality between different kinds of professional teams. This kind of school soccer provides hope, but will never be the one solution to football hooliganism.
Soccer played in the disgraceful idea of Lennart Johansson, where many people are considered too criminal and too sick to take part of a game, is by all measurements hopelessly lost. The more people we shut out from the games, the more enemies and money we shut out – the more problems we create for ourselves as well as our frustrated fellow-footballers.
This spring (2010) it is exactly 100 years since the highest Swedish football league, Allsvenskan, was formed. It’s a name that stands out among all other top-level leagues of Europe. Take for instance the Spanish Liga A, the Italian Serie A, the English or Scottish Premier League – all so-named in order for the audience to recognize that these are the very best, the elite, of one country’s football. Neither is Allsvenskan a sponsor name, such as the Norwegian Tippeligaen, the Danish SAS-ligaen or the Finnish Veikkausliiga.
The German Bundesliga means that is a league that bonds different associations together, and is the only other league name that is something almost similar. But Allsvenskan is not a league just for bonding. Allsvenskan means All Swedish and was originally a nickname invented by the sports-journalist Erik Bergvall. The name immediately got popular in the press and was soon adopted as the only, valid name of the league. Bergvall had a socio-democratic view on sport, as being the only arena in society where people from all social classes and backgrounds could meet and compete on equal terms. The name Allsvenskan is a brainchild of this socio-democratic thought that has come to last at least 100 years.
Let’s make sure that the next 100 years of Allsvenskan will once again be a competition for All Swedish audience who wish to follow it. Let’s create ways for people and money to get in to the game, instead of blocking them out.
/Martin Alsiö
