'Keep it up, boys!': Why Russia cheers its soccer hooligans at Euro 2016
Russian MP says violent fans defending country's honour
Forget the spectacle of 22 young men running back and forth, kicking a ball.
That's for wimps, rich wimps, but wimps nevertheless.
The real contest is in the stands, and in the streets. These are the "Alternative Euros."
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The Euros, for the uninitiated, is the European soccer championship that brings together 24 countries, now being played in France.
The Alternative Euros we owe to the Russians. The title is theirs, dreamt up by a Moscow newspaper. And their squad is dominating play.
"Play" isn't quite the right word. It's actually a form of war carried out by large squads of fit men.
The prey in the days leading up to the tournament and then at the conclusion of the game between England and Russia on June 11 were English fans. Taken unawares, they were battered in the streets and simply fled in the stands. It made for nasty video and photos.
It filled the breasts of patriotic Russian squad members with pride.
"This showed who is the most important among hooligans," said one Russian participant. "In the '70s and '80s everyone would bow down before the English. Now there are different hooligans. These are different times."
Theirs is a calling
For decades, English hooligans, drunken and violent, have been denounced by the authorities and pursued by the police. And in the days leading up to this tournament, some English fans carried on the drunken tradition, getting into fights in Marseille and taking on the police.
But the Russian hooligans see themselves differently and so does their country. According to the Belgian expert on hooliganism, Sébastien Louis, they are not drunks. They don't drink. They train. They have dedicated themselves to violence. They work on their muscles and their martial arts. Theirs is a calling.
As part of their training, they organize fights — 15 against 15 — in parking lots in Moscow and other Russian cities.
The most serious violence in France has taken place in the streets, not in the stands.
Louis watched the Russian hooligans in Marseille, where their team tied England 1-1. He said they worked with military organization. Some posted cards on lampposts to guide the gangs to congregation points. The squads approached along parallel streets to avoid police. Most came to the fight wearing gum guards, and some had clubs.
Like the original football hooligans, the Italian Ultras of the 1960s and 1970s, the Russian "ultras" attach themselves to a team in their country and create havoc for adversaries. Only for international tournaments do they band together.
And like the Italian Ultras, who are still around today, there is a strong whiff of political ideology in their mayhem. Many Italian Ultras are openly fascist and smuggle banners with swastikas into games, which they unfurl with Nazi salutes.
They are also unashamedly racist, taunting black players with bananas and monkey chants.
The Russians do the same.
Buffed and brutal
The major difference is that, where the Italians have always seen themselves in opposition to the state and are greeted by battalions of riot police at soccer games, the Russians are almost embraced by the state.
In the looking-glass world of Vladimir Putin's Russia, these buffed and brutal men are seen as embodying resurgent Russian nationalism.
Igor Lebedev tweeted: "nothing wrong with fighting. Keep it up boys!" He said the hooligans were defending the honour of their country.
Lebedev is a Russian MP and a member of the executive committee of the Russian Soccer Union.
A top police official, Vladimir Markin, added his tweet: "The Europeans are surprised when they see a real man looking like a man should. They're only used to seeing 'men' at gay parades."
And one of the leaders of the hooligan contingent, Alexander Shprygin, known for his far-right views and Nazi salutes, actually came to France as a member of the official Russian soccer delegation.
Sense of victimhood
The Russian gloating turned to consternation and fury on Tuesday when UEFA, the European soccer body, reacted to the violence by fining their soccer federation 150,000 euros and announcing a suspended disqualification of the Russian team from the tournament. One more outburst of hooligan violence inside a stadium and the Russians would be out.
Putin's Russia has a highly developed sense of victimhood and it surfaced again. Several officials saw the threat as UEFA bowing to English pressure, both official and in the media.
English soccer officials have said publicly that the awarding of the 2018 World Cup of soccer to Russia was "fixed." This, then, was viewed as payback. Artem Dzyuba, a player on the Russian national team, spelled it out:
Police in the northern city of Lille fired tear gas Wednesday as British and Russian fans clashed in the streets after Russia's 2-1 loss to Slovakia. There was an estimated 40,000 English and Welsh supporters in the city, many chanting "F--- off Russia."
The French police, who had come into the tournament obsessed with the spectre of terrorism and completely missed the threat of hooliganism, have begun playing catch up.
They rounded up 29 Russian "hooligans" in Marseille on Tuesday, including Shprygin, and set about deporting them.
That one-two punch sent Russian officials in France and Moscow scurrying to find soothing words. They were sure there would be no more violence. Their boys had promised to be good.
But their boys would go home triumphant, whether deported or not. They had dethroned the English hooligans. And they would begin preparing for their next big international battle, in Russia itself, for the World Cup of soccer in two years.
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