When The Beautiful Game Turns Ugly

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/9338962/when-beautiful-game-turns-ugly



Very powerful article. I lived in London for six years as a kid and got to see a lot of Europe (although not Italy). I love Europe, but the people really do have a hard time with anything they see as intruding upon their "ancient" culture. They really need to stamp out this racism. It's not just in Italy.

I think European soccer has a lot of problems, there unfortunately is a culture of hate, violence, and mayhem that surrounds it, at least around certain prominent English teams, I don't pretend to know enough about it in general to say how widespread it is. I don't know why society turns a blind eye to it.

"Beautiful game," Ha! There's nothing beautiful about hooliganism, flopping, and racism. As far as I'm concerned, the game has always been dominated by liars and cheaters (see Maradona's "hand of God" for just one early example).