Friday, February 23, 2007

Soccer's crowd troubles

I can't understand why soccer is unique in the world of sports for the crowd trouble that is a part of the game. Whenever there's trouble at a soccer game there's always an argument about who was to blame. Fans' bad behavior? Or police over-reacting. Or in the case of the Lille vs. Manchester United game on Tuesday - the club for distributing the tickets too early.

Okay, maybe the club did distribute the tickets a month ago, but why should that be a problem? Why would any normal fans travel to France for a Tuesday night soccer game without the certainty of a ticket in their pocket? What is it about soccer that makes distributing tickets a month early an accusation of encouraging crowd trouble?