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When chief constables said yesterday that they wanted to charge football clubs the full cost of policing games, I wondered about the approval which greeted their call. Why do millions who enjoy the game still want to punish its clubs and administrators, when they give the genuinely sinister organisers of the Olympics' minority sports such an easy ride?
At first, along with everyone else I talked to, I cheered the police on. Hit football hard, we cried. Make it suffer. Only afterwards did I worry about being vindictive. Clubs already meet the cost of policing inside their grounds. The police might compel them to pay for the cost of officers escorting fans to and from a game as well but that is not a tactic a democratic society should encourage.
Supporters are free citizens engaged in a lawful activity. The police need to accompany crowds of fans to a stadium because they need controlling and might cause trouble, but then so do and so might crowds of demonstrators.
You could as easily say the organisers of protests should pay for the cost of police escorting them. Indeed, over the years I've heard Rightwingers suggest just that in the hope of pricing protest off the streets.
I live in Islington and remember being appalled by the prospect of the Emirates Stadium opening. Not only am I against Arsenal FC on principle - however beautiful the game Arsene Wenger creates - but I also expected my neighbourhood to be overrun with thugs. I couldn't have been more wrong. Congestion aside, there's little trouble. The fans are boisterous but benign. Even my aunt, who lives two streets away and hates football, concedes that Arsenal's arrival has been nothing like the nightmare she expected. For all their faults, football's administrators are equally harmless. The last World Cup held in a dictatorship was the 1978 tournament in Argentina, then ruled by a repellent military junta.
Nothing the game has done recently compares with the odious subservience of the International Olympic Committee before the Communist Party of China.
Olympic administrators have helped the regime daub a gloss over its denial of human rights, destruction of the environment and oppression of Tibet. Yet still millions of us sigh with pleasure when our competitors win gold.
Money is at the root of our double standard. A successful swimmer or fencer could be the boy or girl next door. We realise that they will soon return to relative poverty and obscurity. So we smile indulgently and try to forget that they are taking part in the most grotesque PR exercise of our lifetimes.
Premier League clubs, by contrast, throw money around - even though most of them are in debt - and allow their players to join the super-rich. Class envy makes us want to punish them. Funny, that: it's our season tickets and pay-TV subscriptions which provide their wealth in the first place.
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If you had to live in an area where mindless football fans trash your carefully-nurtured window boxes, twisted mirrors, bells, lights, gears etc. off your bike, and dropped litter down your area steps, perhaps Nick Cohen would sympathise with residents' feelings.
As a resident, I don't want to punish anyone who doesn't harm me, just because they might follow football.
What I DO want is justice, and Mr. Cohen obviously hasn't experienced the sick feeling one gets each time you step outside your door once the fans have stopped howling past - and you look to see what is missing, trashed, will have to be cleaned up after each match.
The Chief Constables see this time and time again and I am delighted they are on our side, why should we pay for this damage and the policing that has to ensure these mindless fans don't damage more?
- Adela Stanley, London, England.
Nick Cohen says:
" For all their faults, football's administrators are equally harmless. The last World Cup held in a dictatorship was the 1978 tournament in Argentina, then ruled by a repellent military junta.
Nothing the game has done recently compares with the odious subservience of the International Olympic Committee before the Communist Party of China. "
The FIFA Womens World Cup was held in China in 1991, and again in 2007.
To adapt a quotation of JK Galbraith, Nick Cohen is a journalist who, while he always gets the little details wrong, always gets the big issues wrong too.
- Daniel Davies, Camden, London
