My God when are the Euros going to implement ball control? Are they waiting to degenerate into total chaos over there? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521721,00.html?test=latestnews Northern Ireland Soccer Mob Beats Catholic Man to Death AP Kevin McDaid, 49, a Roman Catholic man from Coleraine, Northern Ireland, was beaten to death Sunday by a mob of militant supporters of a Protestant soccer club from Scotland. #story .gallery_container p.caption{display:none !important;} #story .gallery_container p.strut{color:#000;} Kevin McDaid, 49, a Roman Catholic man from Coleraine, Northern Ireland, was beaten to death Sunday by a mob of militant supporters of a Protestant soccer club from Scotland. DUBLIN — Militant Protestant supporters of a Scottish soccer team beat to death a Roman Catholic man in the latest sign of how sports rivalries inspire sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland, police and politicians said Monday. Witnesses said more than 20 Protestant supporters of Glasgow Rangers, many of them wearing the team's blue-and-white jerseys and scarves, drove into a Catholic district of the town of Coleraine after Rangers clinched the Scottish Premier League championship Sunday. Billy Leonard, a former policeman and politician from the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, said several carloads of anti-Catholic extremists came armed with clubs "and literally attacked the first person they came across."
For some people, soccer is just a convenient hook upon which to hang their political coat. In the 1980s, the queer-bashers and nigger-baiters similarly hitched onto UK football. Fervent tribalism is part of football. Hell, I've called Arsenal fans 'cunts' before... but I do draw a line between football and wider socio-economic or political issues. Some people clearly still don't.
Nope, they are Firms and they have a reputation to keep up. What does a "Roman Catholic man" look like anyways?
Wow, our gangs are much more civilized, they only kill for prime commercial real estate for drug sales.
Wheeee it's not any old football rivalry... It's Celtic - Rangers football rivalry. I.E. take the worst conventional football rivalries, and mix it with a vicious cocktail of political/national affiliation in a setting where political/national violence has been an everyday occurrence for 30 of the last 40 years, and an off-and-on occurrence in the remaining 10.
This has little to do with actual soccer, more to do with the same fucked-up tribal sectarianism we've had here for decades.
