Murder in Serbia

Grim news from Belgrade this morning, where a Toulouse fan who was assaulted prior to the French club’s group stage match with Partizan Belgrade died in the hospital. Unfortunately, in the world of Serbian football, this murder is another bullet point on a long list of violence that actually includes previous deaths.

I’m wondering if we’ll actually see Partizan in serious trouble with UEFA (they’ve been expelled from the UEFA Cup before because of crowd trouble) because of this incident, or if it will be treated as yet another individual case that just coincidentally occurred around a football match. Serbian police have already made arrests, and have, overall, taken a harder line on hooliganism in recent years, but I can’t help but think that focusing on individual perpetrators, after the fact, while rightly punishing the individual criminal, isn’t going to curb football violence.

In the context of these violent fan groups, the individual is ultimately of less importance than the group and the club itself. Anything suffered while ‘on duty’ for the club is likely to be viewed as some sort of perverse honor.

Obviously, social problems in Serbia go far beyond football. Matters are, of course, complicated by the fact that actual wars have occurred there in recent history. I’m far from an expert on the sociology of the situation, but I would imagine when so much international football hooliganism is seen as recreational in nature by the participants, that this notion would be amplified in a country that has been involved in some truly brutal fighting.

It seems ridiculous to talk about bans or point deductions at a time like this, but there’s no way on earth that the act of attending a football match could put someone in actual, mortal danger should be tolerated for a second.

Category: Fan violence, Other, europa league

Tags: europa league, Fan violence, Other

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