Tuesday, Jul 8, 2008
Ethan Zindler reports that threat and theft take over the town of Lens during the England-Colombia World Cup match.
Jun 30, 1998 |
LENS, France June 26: Major soccer tournaments can be violent affairs, and this World Cup has already seen its share of hooliganism. Over the past week or so, the French press has closely followed the case of Daniel Nivel, a national police officer who lies in a coma with severe brain damage after an attack by hooligans. Nivel was on duty in Lens for the Germany-Yugoslavia match when a gang of 500 neo-Nazis went on a rampage through the town. He was cornered and beaten savagely with an iron bar. A photo of the poor guy lying face down in a pool of blood ran on the front page of many French papers the next day.
The fact that Germans staged this latest attack was somewhat unexpected. English supporters are notoriously the continent's most violent, and in the first week of the tournament they lived up to that billing. During two days prior to England's Cup opener against Tunisia, they skirmished with police in and around the Vieux Port in Marseille. It all came to a head on game day with a giant rumble on the Prado Beach involving not only the English and police but Tunisian supporters as well.
Tonight's match is enormously important for England. They looked good but not great during their first two matches. If they don't get a win or a tie, their World Cup is over. Despite inventing the game, England has only won the World Cup once -- in 1966. Perhaps that's part of why English supporters are always so pissed off.
I don't have a ticket to the match but hop the TGV from Paris to Lens anyway. It seems that no World Cup experience would be complete without spending at least a day with the event's more extreme elements. And, who knows, maybe a ticket will come my way.
Outside the train station, all is calm, but there is a vague sense of tension and expectation in the air. Motley, slightly menacing clusters of youths with little or no hair (but plenty of tattoos) linger in the parking lot and outside nearby cafes. There are supposed to be 1,700 riot cops in Lens today, and given that the town itself has a population of only 35,000, one would expect to see them everywhere. But only two traffic police are on duty outside the station. Then again, it's eight hours to game time. It's surprisingly cool and breezy out and the sky is partly cloudy.
Though today is a business day, the streets of Lens are virtually deserted, apart from English supporters. Most of the stores are closed. Several shop owners tell me it's just for lunch. But most appear to have closed for the day. Some say they'll close for lunch, then wait and see. Two women are locking the door to their poster shop. Why? "Because we don't want trouble," one says. What about the loss in revenue? "The English don't spend anything." The Germans and Spanish were much better, they say.
But establishments that might best capitalize on today's crowd are closed as well. The Supp R Lens store sells soccer souvenirs; Irish Tavern and Le McEwan's appear to be English-style pubs. All are closed.
Some shops, however, continue to do business. A fish market on one of Lens' main drags is wide open, with stinky mussels and salmon arrayed beautifully on ice. The owner says that other stores are closed because "everyone's afraid." She says she's not and jokingly grabs a couple of 20-inch mackerels. "I'll hit 'em with these," she says. Her customers laugh.
Farther up the road is a phone booth. As I finish making a call, a startling figure with enormous yellow teeth asks in English, "So what do you think of all this then?" His face and neck are covered with pockmarks from what appears to have been a war lost to acne during his teen years. He's wearing a Levi's jeans jacket and seems to be concealing something rather large underneath.
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