The rabid scenes at Upton Park on Tuesday night gave all of us a jab in the arm like a tetanus shot that hooliganism still lurks in the darker corners of football.
It did not make for good viewing. West Ham fans on the pitch at the Boleyn Ground provoking Millwall supporters, the stabbing incident before kick-off and the unsavoury scenes of hundreds of fans goading riot police after the match was just the sort of postcard image both clubs would have wanted to show anyone thinking of joining them for their next fixtures.
But it's easy to blame the clubs, in this case West Ham and Millwall, for failing to control their fans. Don't get me wrong, clubs and players do have responsibilities to conduct themselves in the right way and set an example, especially to those young enough to absorb the words and actions so readily. Players are scalded for any behaviour we decree not befitting of a man taking home in a day's salary what we would struggle to take home in a month and yet the majority of whom do a ton of work for good causes and to promote their club behind the scenes in the community without so much as a mention.
Clubs in England have worked feverishly over the last 20 years with the Football Association to eliminate this kamode element of fans and make grounds a more family-orientated experience. Stadia has been improved beyond recognition to the old wooden shacks I used to visit as a young boy in the early 1980s and while police presence has always been something I associate with going to matches, training and handling to diffuse situations between rival supporters before they flare up have, for the most part, allowed the majority of fans to enjoy their match day experience.
Clubs have actively seeked out those perpetrators of violence, initiating bans ? some for life ? on anyone misbehaving in, around, or in some cases travelling to the ground.
They not only provide their own security within the stadium but also have to pay local law enforcement to police outside the ground for every match day. And that doesn't come cheap.
Trying to oversee the good reputation of a football club with it's hardcore element hell bent on tarnishing must be a lot like trying to run a successful restaurant with a chef who only does a shop once a week. You've got 60 covers for a lunchtime service, the stoves have been cleaned, floors have been swept, the glasses and cutlery polished. On the surface, it appears immaculate; somewhere you would happily take your family for an afternoon and even be willing to overlook the extortionate prices the chef has finely inked on an exuberant menu for four times what it costs to make the dish.
The dining room is a whirlwind of hot plates, clinking of glasses and the hospitality of staff tentative to your needs.
Then we move onto the kitchen. As said, the stoves have been cleaned, floors mopped furiously as if getting ready to stage an episode of Strictly Come Dancing. But then, your delicate senses are directed towards the fridge; when you open it, it should be a kingdom of fresh produce, locally sourced ingredients and the tenderest cuts to make the mouth water. The life source of your operation.
But you've got a sloppy chef who think fresh produce means fresh out of a can and lasts three weeks. When you open the fridge door, you're greeted with decaying vegetables, sauces that have developed mould and rancid cuts that would make even those with a palette like the inside of a bird cage turn their noses up. The rot of the old will always spoil the splendour of the new.
I'm not just here to sound out the shortcomings of West Ham and Millwall fans, far from it. I understand football rivalry, I dislike pretty much every other team on the planet other than my own when I'm not in a working capacity. But I think I have a pretty clear sense of the parameters of acceptability in letting another group of supporters know what I think of their team/town/women with words and the parameters of unacceptability of doing it by force.
This disease is not exclusive to English football by any means either. English football and its fans have done well to shake off the unfortunate tag of 'English invaders' that served us so well in the late 1970s and 1980s. Armed with the mandate of burning the locals, terrifying the opposition and getting on a first-name basis with the local constabulary, Uefa subsequently imposed a ban on all English clubs from its competitions after the Heysel Stadium Disaster in 1985 ? in which 39 people died and 600 were injured ? which lasted five years (Liverpool were banned for an additional year which also saw a number of their fans charged with manslaughter).
Every country has its hardcore fan-base. Real Madrid, Europe's most successful club, are backed by the notorious right-wing group, Ultras Sur. The Italian side Lazio give carte blanche in and around the Stadio Olympico to their Irriducibili fans, which is a bit like having 10,000 rabid dogs on the loose with the keys to lock up after they're finished. Teams in the Balkans have been investigated by Uefa for everything from racial abuse to the attempted murder of their own players.
Even in the UAE, a country in its infancy in terms of professionalism, the authorities are getting a taste of how much this great sport can dement even the most upstanding members among us with the Al Ain fans, who found themselves up before the beak on more than one occasion last season for their fans' raucous behaviour.
Hooliganism is still alive and unwell in football. No matter how much is done to paper over the cracks, underneath every club's goodwill in the community scheme and every attempt to stamp out the undesirable elements, it lurks. It feeds off the energy of the game just as much as every aspiring footballer and dedicated fan. Perhaps even more so.
sluckings@thenational.ae
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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The years Ramadan fell in May
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Trippier bio
Date of birth September 19, 1990
Place of birth Bury, United Kingdom
Age 26
Height 1.74 metres
Nationality England
Position Right-back
Foot Right
Visa changes give families fresh hope
Foreign workers can sponsor family members based solely on their income
Male residents employed in the UAE can sponsor immediate family members, such as wife and children, subject to conditions that include a minimum salary of Dh 4,000 or Dh 3,000 plus accommodation.
Attested original marriage certificate, birth certificate of the child, ejari or rental contract, labour contract, salary certificate must be submitted to the government authorised typing centre to complete the sponsorship process
In Abu Dhabi, a woman can sponsor her husband and children if she holds a residence permit stating she is an engineer, teacher, doctor, nurse or any profession related to the medical sector and her monthly salary is at least Dh 10,000 or Dh 8,000 plus accommodation.
In Dubai, if a woman is not employed in the above categories she can get approval to sponsor her family if her monthly salary is more than Dh 10,000 and with a special permission from the Department of Naturalization and Residency Dubai.
To sponsor parents, a worker should earn Dh20,000 or Dh19,000 a month, plus a two-bedroom accommodation
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
How the bonus system works
The two riders are among several riders in the UAE to receive the top payment of £10,000 under the Thank You Fund of £16 million (Dh80m), which was announced in conjunction with Deliveroo's £8 billion (Dh40bn) stock market listing earlier this year.
The £10,000 (Dh50,000) payment is made to those riders who have completed the highest number of orders in each market.
There are also riders who will receive payments of £1,000 (Dh5,000) and £500 (Dh2,500).
All riders who have worked with Deliveroo for at least one year and completed 2,000 orders will receive £200 (Dh1,000), the company said when it announced the scheme.
RESULTS
Bantamweight:
Zia Mashwani (PAK) bt Chris Corton (PHI)
Super lightweight:
Flavio Serafin (BRA) bt Mohammad Al Khatib (JOR)
Super lightweight:
Dwight Brooks (USA) bt Alex Nacfur (BRA)
Bantamweight:
Tariq Ismail (CAN) bt Jalal Al Daaja (JOR)
Featherweight:
Abdullatip Magomedov (RUS) bt Sulaiman Al Modhyan (KUW)
Middleweight:
Mohammad Fakhreddine (LEB) bt Christofer Silva (BRA)
Middleweight:
Rustam Chsiev (RUS) bt Tarek Suleiman (SYR)
Welterweight:
Khamzat Chimaev (SWE) bt Mzwandile Hlongwa (RSA)
Lightweight:
Alex Martinez (CAN) bt Anas Siraj Mounir (MAR)
Welterweight:
Jarrah Al Selawi (JOR) bt Abdoul Abdouraguimov (FRA)
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
