football is war.

In the recent developments in Eastern Ukraine something struck me: the support for a united Ukraine from football supporters from Charkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Dnipropetrovsk. The Ukrainian competition is postponed since the outbreak of the protests, but this didn’t make the supporters less active. Usually the hooligans of Dinamo and Metalist Kyev fight each other, but since the trouble started, they joined hands on Euromaidan. They were used to fight the police anyway, but in January they started battling against pro-government supporters as well. 

When the Yanukovich regime fell, they continued to fight the opponents of a united Ukraine. Hooligans went on the streets to organize ‘counter-demonstrations’ against the ‘separatists’ who took government buildings in the Donbas. The massacre in Odessa at the beginning of this month started when a pro-government rally of the fans of Metalist Charkiv and Chornomorets Odesa clashed with anti-government groups. 

The core of football supporters is associated with the far-right (such as the Svoboda party) and the infamous Pravyi Sektor – which are awkwardly allied with the provisional government. The links between the far-right and football ultras is not new and not unique. Organized groups of violent thugs often presume upon national pride. Hooliganism and criminality can be legitimized by patriotism. The fans of the Glasgow Rangers and Celtic often cast their rivalry in sectarian (Protestant or Catholic) terms, for example. Famous is the so-called ‘Soccer War’ between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. Hooligans are as a rule familiar with organized violence. Therefore, they were often involved in violent uprisings and civil wars. It makes a hell of a difference when opportunist politicians arm these thugs. Ritual violence turns real, and that’s what happened in the former Yugoslavia. 

It is said that the war between ‘Yugoslavia’ (by then, read: Serbia) and Croatia started with the riots surrounding a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade in 1990. The ultras of Red Star were led by the infamous ‘Arkan’. In the subsequent civil war, Arkan became the leader of the feared Serbian paramilitary ‘Tigers’. The Tigers were largely recruited from Red Star hooligans. During the nineties the Red Star ultras continued to be very influential. The core of Red Star is still powerful, for example in the Serbian stance towards Kosovo. In 2011 hooligans prevented the first Serbian gay pride. It’s not different in Serbia’s neighbours. A civil war in Macedonia was prevented in 2001, but both guerrilla and hooligan leaders make careers into politics.