Football Fan Culture in Russia and in England

Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации

Государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение города Москвы

гимназия №1595

Проект

по предмету «Английский язык»

Football Fan Culture in Russia and in England

Выполнил:  

Зотов Дмитрий

ученик 10 класса А

Научный руководитель:

учитель английского языка

Орехова Людмила Владимировна

Москва, 2013

Проблема поведения футбольных фанатов весьма актуальна в наше время. Спорт без болельщиков не может существовать. Но поведение фанатов не всегда является примером для подражания.

Цель представленного проекта  - сравнить культуру болельщиков России и Англии.

Задачи:

- проследить развитие фанатского движения;

- сравнить поведение фанатов до, во время и после матчей;

- показать взаимоотношение фанатских групп;

- выявить отношение фанатских групп к футбольным игрокам;

- привести примеры художественных фильмов о футболе.

The problem of football fans’ behavior is highly relevant and widely discussed nowadays. One can imagine sport without fans. But the behavior of fans is not kept within bounds. What's worse, it's in Russia where a distinctive feature in the fan culture is very strong ideas of ​​Russian nationalism. Take the trip by train from the suburban part of Moscow or Moscow region at the weekend when   Lokomotiv Moscow plays against CSKA Moscow, so and there is a good chance that you get into the centre of a violent conflict. This usually happens when a crowd of drunk hooligans get on the train just to  warm up before the match. They choose a victim rather of Eastern appearance. There are a lot of examples of aggressive behavior of fans and this is surely to be changed.

The objectives and aims of our research project are to  compare Football Fan Culture in Russia and England. Why does England seem to have passed the peak of violence? And why is Russia experiencing serious problems with fans?

Football is one of the most popular sports, for some people it's more than  just a game, for them it is the meaning of life. Since the appearance of football, fans have encouraged their team before the game, on the pitch and after the game. There are different ways of encouragement: from songs and banners up to fists and bats.  The first example of football violence is unknown, but the phenomenon can be traced back to 14th-century England. In 1314, Edward II banned football (at that time, a violent, unruly activity involving rival villages kicking a pig's bladder across the local heath) because he believed the disorder surrounding matches might lead to social unrest, or even treason. The first recorded instances of football hooliganism in the modern game allegedly occurred during the 1880s in England, a period when gangs of supporters would intimidate neighbourhoods, in addition to attacking referees, opposing supporters and players. In 1885, after Preston North End beat Aston Villa 5–0 in a friendly match, both teams were pelted with stones, attacked with sticks, punched, kicked and spat at. One Preston player was beaten so severely that he lost consciousness and press reports at the time described the fans as "howling roughs". The fan movement had already started  in England by  the  60s, already at that time the fans, or as they were called hooligans, often went fighting against each other for their favorite club. And later the movement spread throughout the world. In the 70s in the USSR fans took over the culture of fans’ style from Britain. Then the first ultras (organized groups of fans) started to appear. In the mid 80s the attitude to football changed completely. At that time fans got more freedom. Being influenced by English fans’ movement the violence amongst Russian fans increased dramatically. After the break-up of the USSR hooligans kept quiet, and the news about fans’ conflicts or even fights subsided till 1994. Shortly after, the movement became trendy, and, following Moscow’s example, a large number of fan groups started to appear and was constantly increasing throughout the country.

In England just like in Russia, football fans think of  opposing team fans as a “Friend or Foe”. But in England the attitude to a “foe” is somehow more respectful. The example is the match between Everton  and Liverpool, it can be compared to the Russian derby  CSKA Moscow – Spartak Moscow, but we highly doubt that any of the fans of CSKA will ever help an elderly fan of Spartak to take a seat. Even if the same fan of Spartak accidentally mixes the stands and will appear on the fan sector of CSKA, fortunately, he will not be beaten, but not so many people will rush to help him. But in some situations fans of different clubs can stand for each other, such things sometimes happen when they go abroad together to show the unity of the Russians. For example, the recent murder of Yegor Shcherbakov united fans of different opposing Moscow clubs. In England such things are hardly ever possible. The idea of patriotism in the culture of Russian fans is stronger than among the English. Our next photo shows how the fans of Manchester City help the player of Liverpool to stand up.  It is just impossible to see in the Russian Premier League. But we can see how they "respect" opposing team players – abusing, throwing firecrackers. Such an event occurred in the Premier League last season Zenit fans threw a firecracker into the goalkeeper of Dynamo. The most interesting thing is  to get to the stadium you must pass at least three police inspections. Furthermore, there are a lot of security officers during the match but that does not help to feel safer, anyway. In England the fans are trusted. But for breaking the rules by fans the club will pay a heavy fine, and when you watch Premier League games (English Premier League), one wonders where the guard is. The truth must be admitted that in England fans are much more likely to run out onto the football pitch, in Russia if a person tries to do so, they can be sent to prison. Regarding the situation with firecrackers there are two options, either the police made ​​a mistake and didn’t find them, or the fans  managed to hide a small firecracker. There is one more option that a girl brought it inside in sex organs. This is another feature of Russian fan culture. Girls in England go to watch the game of football, but not just sit on the fan sectors to please her boyfriend fan, imitating his violent behavior.

Another difference in team support is using slogans. It is worth listening Liverpool fans singing «You Never Walk Alone» at the stadium when their club plays. And our fans shout insulting chants instead of supporting songs. It happens sometimes in the Premier League that abusing chants are sung not only about the opposing team but in ‘support’ of the players of a favorite club. Such an incident happened when Zenit fans sang abusive chants about Roman Shirokov, a player in return when scoring a goal, celebrated it in his own manner. He came to the fan zone and made a rude gesture at the fans, for that he was immediately sent off by the referee.  Due to these and many other factors you can not come to the stadium with your little child. In England you watch the game at the stadium as a kind of family entertainment. To tell the truth, there are  anti-abusing, anti-smoking and anti-racist chants campaigns in Russia. But until the government introduces tough laws there will still be problems with fans’ behavior.

Now Russia is overloaded with fans who are interested not in the game itself but in the topic about football. For some of them football is just the reason to fight or do indecent things, and for others just a trendy thing that is popular now. On the contrary, football has become part of English culture, and many people begin to be interested in it since childhood. Watching the matches of the Football League Championship (second-highest division in the English football system), we can all the same see the full stadiums and at times there are even more spectators than there are at the matches of the Premier League in Russia. There is a tradition in England to support a club that plays in your hometown, and even if you move, you should support the club at a distance. If you were born in a place where 3-4 teams play, then a child starts to support the club his/her parents support. But we often face fans who stop cheering their club as soon as it starts to play badly. To illustrate this, many people whom I knew in my childhood admired CSKA Moscow, and now meeting them on the street, I see them wearing Spartak scarves, and for them it's perfectly normal. In England, fans are more faithful, football for them is part of their lives, and they do not stop coming to matches if their team shows a bad game. In Russia, but there is another tendency to show your dissatisfaction with your team’s poor play. So did Dynamo fans, who did not like the play of their team last season. They came to the training base of the team and expressed their outrage. We must admit that this helped. We can assume that in England fans are more passive struggling with a bad play.

We think that football hooligans will still be in ‘fashion’ as this process hasn’t reached its maximum point in Russia. Within a year we may see more girls and young men who are not fully able to understand the concept of a real football fan, their actions, their unacceptable behavior. There can also be some negative consequences after the release of the movie “Околофутбола”, in which we see all the reality of football fans’ life. We are more than confident that after watching this film 14 and 5-year-old teenagers will want to be like those fighters who are shown in the film. One of the top English movies about football is «Green street hooligans». It is not worth even talking about the work of directors. Regarding the plot the film about English fans is definetely better. There is neither love story nor manifestations of racism – it is the very film about football. «Green street hooligans» does not show completely negative characters. On the contrary, bad guys can be seen almost everywhere in the Russian film. The ending of the movie "Околофутбола" amazes people, it’s even better to say, shocks people: two opposing fans' groups get together and attack riot police, but the question arises - why? what for? In general, while watching this film the question “why” comes up very often. In fact, the problem of football hooligans is not solved – the film is just the subject of pure speculation in a trendy movement to attract the target audience and the payback of the film.

To sum up. Football fan culture has been developing rapidly in Russia for the past several decades. There are even more things to do and to change to improve the situation with football in general and football fan culture in particular.

Bibliography

1. http://www.spb.aif.ru/sport/sport_details/705536 
2. http://www.sports.ru/tribuna/blogs/fanatism/55664.html
3. http://ctb.ru/splash/
4. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/?4??4??4??4??4??4??5??4?..
5. http://www.sovsport.ru/gazeta/article-item/569786
6. http://news.frrole.com/o/an-everton-fan-helping-a-liv..
7. http://www.warnervideo.com/greenstreethooligans/