Japan's latest import - fan violence.
Monday, 19 May 08, 11:35 PM
57,050 fans turned out at Saitama Stadium on May 17 to watch the high-profile J. League clash between Urawa Reds and Gamba Osaka. Not all of them liked what they saw.
Played in a tinderbox atmosphere, the match exploded into life - and controversy, a minute before half-time. Under pressure from Urawa defender Yuki Abe, Gamba's Brazilian striker Bare seemingly played the ball into touch adjacent to the corner flag. Ever the quick-thinker, Bare simply picked the ball up and threw it to the feet of Takahiro Futagawa. While Abe and his fellow Urawa defenders protested to referee Masayoshi Okada, Futagawa fed Masato Yamazaki to nonchalantly sweep the ball home in front of the Urawa home end. That handed Gamba a 2-0 half-time lead.
The record books will show that Gamba eventually went on to win 3-2, thanks in no small part to a majestic third from Yasuhito Endo that helped the Osakans to break their Saitama hoodoo. Yet few were talking about the result come the end of the match.
That's because in a fit of childish petulance the Urawa players demanded that Gamba halt their post-match celebrations, which consisted of nothing more than jumping around inside the centre circle. Gamba's decision to celebrate in front of the away end at the behest of the enraged Reds did little to reduce the tension. Indeed, it seemed to fuel it.
It's difficult to single out individual Urawa players when the entire squad seemed take part in the scuffle that ensued, yet two players should come under particular scrutiny. They are Urawa goalkeeper Ryota Tsuzuki and defensive midfielder Marcos Tulio Tanaka. Above all else, the actions of these two players endangered the lives of fans packed into the goal at the away end.
Tsuzuki is an ex-Gamba player, yet he was infuriated by the loss, and was repeatedly restrained by his team-mates from seemingly trying to attack his former colleagues. Marcos Tulio Tanaka is renowned as one of the most passionate players in Japanese football, yet he too overstepped the mark, although in Gamba's Bare he for once found an adversary who was not afraid to back down from a fight.
By now the action on the pitch was a mere sideshow to the chaos taking place on the terraces. The boorish behaviour of Urawa's spoilt fans has long been a bone of contention for fans of rival J. League clubs. However the Reds fans went well beyond their usual jeering, as several of them attempted to tear down the fence that separated the two sets of supporters. Some Gamba fans responded by raining projectiles down on their counterparts - not the smartest of moves, as the police watched on helplessly.
In the mayhem that followed one Gamba fan was reportedly injured attempting to scale the fence, while the Reds fans themselves managed to tear down a section of the partition and were only held back by a desperate line of police. One Reds fan lobbed what appeared to be a steel flagpole into the Gamba section. The footage was eagerly seized upon and broadcast all over the nightly news.
It's not a good look for the J. League, which is precisely why in their English-language round-up there is not a single mention of the fan violence. Any hopes that the J. League had of keeping the crowd disturbances quiet are dashed by the fact that an army of savvy fans filmed it from a variety of angles and duly uploaded it to YouTube.
The irony is that when quizzed on the topic of hooliganism, most Japanese football fans will quickly link it to English football. Yet hooliganism was all but stamped out of English football twenty years ago. While clashes between rivals fans still occur, they are generally staged events that take place away from football stadia. They are not the kind of incidents that endanger the general public in front of a police force that has little experience in crowd control.
While Gamba fans are not blameless in this incident, the J. League should throw the book at Urawa for the actions of their fans. Even after the incident had died down, some 5,000 Urawa fans waited outside the ground for up to three hours for the beleaguered Gamba supporters to emerge, before police finally convinced the Reds fans to disperse.
Having offered Urawa favourable treatment for so long, the J. League must now reckon with the monster that they have created. The Reds players and a large section of their support consider themselves above the J. League. A home defeat is now cause for a mini-riot. Opposition celebrations are tantamount to a declaration of war. How did this happen?
Urawa Reds may be lauded for the size of their crowds or their sizeable profits, but unless the J. League treads very, very carefully, then the Saitama club could soon become the straw that breaks the camel's back. No one can say that the J. League hasn't been warned.
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Interesting article, although I have to disagree with certain things you wrote.
It starts of with the title: fan violence is not a new import to the J.League. As soon as November '94 Urawa supporters made it to the headlines by throwing bottles and other trash at the pitch and lighting smoke candles - back then the actions were aimed towards the own team who played really bad. Those kind of events repeated itself all the way through the 90s, also at other grounds like Kashiwa's - throwing coins and other objects at players and opposing fans.
I guess it's a kind of logical consequence, if you stress hyper-masculinity and delinquency in the supporters' cultures, like at Urawa or e.g. InFight at Kashima.
Ultimately however, nothing really bad happened last weekend, while it shows that people get emotionally involved. And that's rather positive.It shows that football has arrived in Japan.
That's an interesting point of view from someone who has spent a considerable period of time conducting an academic study into Japanese fan behaviour, Martin.
The title is a tongue in cheek reference to the fact that Japan tends to import a lot of it's popular trends into the country.
No real fan of Japanese football needs too much reminding that fan violence has been a sporadic problem in the J. League. In fact the league itself made reference today to the fine handed out to Kashiwa Reysol after disturbances involving their fans in 2005.
It's with the statement "nothing really bad happened" that I must take umbrage.
Apart from a flag-pole being launched in the direction of Gamba Osaka fans - the simple fact is that a worrying precedent was set here. Beat Urawa at Saitama Stadium and the result might turn into a major catastrophe.
However you approach it, that's bad for the league.
Thanks, Mike. I think I have to refine my statement. "Nothing really bad happened" compared to what you see in Europe each weekend. Violence might have vanished almost completely from stadiums in England, but not in Germany, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Swiss, ...
Still, throwing projectiles is the worst you can do, because there's no control of who or what you hit.
What I meant to say though, is that this kind of emotional involvement is sth. rather positive. If you look at the facts, it would have been easy to storm the Gamba stands, but the fans mainly stuck to yelling at eachother.
Anyway the J.League has to act to become master of the situation. I mean, since you live in Japan, I guess you know about the police 'force'...
Today I went to see Sumo in Tokyo and was once again astonished by the lack of security personnel. A packed arena with 3 tiny ladies to take care of safety..
Have the Urawa Red fans blamed the violence on Chelsea and Millwall thugs enjoying a day out?
Just a thought.
They didn't exactly blame it on them. It's quite the other way round:
From the beginning of the J.League, Urawa and its fans have been maybe the club that aspired after English clubs' images the most. Using the abbreviation "the Reds", publishing the "Matchday Program", using songs from English fan cultures etc. and basically trying to establish a kind of 'thuggish' image. Newspaper articles and also some publications directly by supporter groups took their part in creating and maintaining this image. So from the beginning, Urawa fans were known as the 'hooligans' of Japan, which is of course not equivalent to their European or South American counterparts.
Anyway, if you build up such a strong image, it's not surprising that actually sometimes members act in this manner.
Martin: Thanks for the that. What I was getting that though was last weeks UEFA Cup Final was marred by violence by R*ngers fans. The Scottish press and the club are trying to blame Chelsea and Millwall fans for the trouble....
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I read some articles about this. And it seemed that the reason why Urawa fans took that action was one of the Gamba fan threw a balloon filled with water into Urawa section, and that hit a kid. Then Urawa fan started to demand an apology from him and then.... You know what happened.
I read this. Then I read the news reports again. Couldn’t believe it. We get a lot of Japanese at Celtic Park and I’ve seen them getting spooked by a rouge crisp poke flying by their heads.
What is next? Fighting in the MLS?