Kolkata: Discrepancies in Egypt have always been a major issue including in sports. A wave of violence surrounded the fans as they burnt down the national football headquarters and a police club there after an Egyptian court delivered death sentences to 21 accused for the 2012 deadly riot that killed over 70 people in the Port Said Stadium, Port Said. Hearing the verdict of the judge, protesters of the city tried to block the Suez Canal and uprisings broke out in Cairo on Saturday, setting loose boats, attempting to block the Suez with ferries, and attacking the city’s stadium. In Cairo, football fans set on fire a police building and two restaurants blocked a number of roads and one of the city’s main bridges.
The fateful riot took place at Port Said Stadium on February 1, 2012, right after an Egyptian Premier League match between El-Masry and Al-Ahly Football teams. Around 74 people were killed and more than 500 injured after thousands of El-Masry fans attacked El Ahly fans, following a 3–1 victory by El-Masry. Running against all forms of normality, El Ahly and El Masry fans showed their poor ideals of sports and sportsmanship as they mercilessly attacked one another using knives, stones, bottles and fireworks while the police kept all gates closed.
Such cases of violence and outbursts by football fans are nothing new. Time and again, we have seen such barbarity by football fans around the world. Yet there are instances when the innocent are made to be portrayed as the perpetrators. On April 15, 1989, almost 50,000 people assembled at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, for the FA Cup Semi-Final football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. In order to lessen a jam of Liverpool fans who were trying to get into the stadium, police opened an exit gate and people hurried in which resulted in a massive human stampede. Ultimately 96 people died that day in the unfortunate incident. To make matters worse the Police and the then British government blamed the fans for the horrific tragedy, saying they were a drunk and an unruly bunch was responsible for their own deaths. Twenty seven years later the verdict came out where a jury found that the fans who died during the match had been “unlawfully killed” and the victims of what proved to be fatal police mistakes and crowd mismanagement.
The Heysel disaster, sometimes called “English football’s forgotten history” also deserves a special mention. Much like the Hillsborough disaster, escaping fans were pressed against a collapsing wall in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, before the start of the 1985 European Cup Final between Juventus of Italy and Liverpool of England. Around 39 people, mostly Italians and Juventus fans were killed and 600 were injured in the conflict after the crowd trouble culminated into a surge by Liverpool supporters towards the Italian team’s fans. It resulted in all English clubs being banned from Europe for five years and exacerbated English supporters’ increasingly thuggish reputation at the time.
Back in the 2012, midway through the Kolkata derby, a charged-up Mohun Bagan group of supporters got into the act and threw stones from the gallery, which, incidentally, hit their Bagan star Rahim Nabi on the head, forcing the marquee I-League clash between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal to be called off, besides leaving 40 injured. The incident reminded one of the violence during another Mohun Bagan-East Bengal derby at the Eden Gardens back in 1980 where 16 football fans were killed and scores injured.
(With inputs from Agencies)