Neven claims that even for 1 million Euros he would not play for Hajduk (Dinamo’s biggest rivals), which to me seems nuts, not because of the money, but the fact that you are a professional first and foremost, and it is only a season that you have to spend there. I even added the caveat to him that he would be able to most likely have his pick of the girls in the region :p as all would be enthralled with him playing for the home club and he still refused. I always thought if you appeal to two things to a man, money and sex, that they take it. But he held steadfast. Good for Neven. Really I threw in the women throwing themselves at him option just because I wanted to see if it would weaken his resolve even a little, again commend the man, he did not flinch.
What about the rest of you?
I think that for 1 million Euros (which is not even a lot) I would be playing for whatever team wants me. Neven said it is because I do not feel at home anywhere and thus have no real ties to a place. If I insulted my ‘home city’ by going to the biggest rivals I could never walk down the street in (Zagreb, Miami, or wherever my home might be) again without looking over my shoulder and having some hooligan crack me. Maybe he has a point but really, I love soccer/basketball and all that, but even though I never said it before 'it is just sports' it feels like so much more at the time of the game or tournament. But really it is a game, the players treat it as a job that they do and get paid for, passions are high but at the end of the day 'it is just sports.'
Now I am going to offend some people, actually I am going to offend a lot of people.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Now substitute this being poor folks from the Appalachian states in the US (West Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc) and guns and religion for football hooligans and their clinging for their local team (with knives, bats and guns usually). It comes out to the same thing, they cling to some loyalty to a club—whose management could give a toss about them and will sell every half decent player for a profit the first chance they get—for the same reasons, lack of jobs, structure in their lives, and a sense of a purpose past the weekly football match (the biannual election season where ‘morals’ become a tipping point for millions of voters)
It is my hypothesis that hooligans in Europe face the same socioeconomic conditions that rural white folks do in America—lack of jobs, career opportunities, and a more broad view of the world—and thus act out the same way. They repress these emotions at their jobs, homes (sometimes not so much) and then take it out on Sunday after the game by bashing the heads of the other fans for fun. The voters repress in the same way: their jobs (if they have not been outsourced) are under threat by downsizing, their neighborhood looks less homogenic, foreign religions are scaring them, not to mention that two houses down the road Adam and Steve are living together. So they act out when elections come around and vote for those who promise they will stop outsourcing, keep guns easily available, ban immigrants and ban gay marriage.
I will do more research on this in the future. But think about it, are the two groups not alike: uneducated, poor, male, frustrated at the world, and easily manipulated.
