Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993 TAG: 9311280174
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by GLENN EMBREY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Among The Thugs" is a more mundane version of the truth sensationalized during last year's Los Angeles riots _ that laws are enforced not by the police but by most people's willingness to obey them. When enough people are not so willing, the police are powerless against them.
This truth is played out weekly during Britain's soccer season. After seeing a subway car literally ripped apart by soccer fans, Bill Buford, an American editor living in London, began to attend soccer games and the fans' pre- and post-game antics, though "antics" is much too tame a word.
Fans gather in pubs, drink themselves into a frenzy, then roam the streets in mobs attacking whatever appeals to them. Fans of opposing teams are what appeal to them most, though any person unlucky enough to be on the streets or any physical object at all will usually do. They wantonly destroy property; they hurt, maim, and sometimes kill people. British soccer fans
are notorious for taking their violence abroad. Buford describes a trip to Turin with a group of fans who had been banned from games even by the team they support. On the bus ride from the airport to the stadium, the fans went from drunkenly chanting dirty songs to shouting obscenities at the crowds along the curbside, and then to hurling bottles and cans at them; some fans pushed their bare backsides out the window, some urinated on the crowds. When they arrived at the stadium ticketless, they were ushered into the game because the police didn't want them turned loose on the city.
Despite the violence, the book is enormously entertaining, though the same page that makes you laugh out loud is also liable to make you shake your head in disbelief, and then recoil in horror. \
Glenn Embrey teaches at Radford University
by CNB