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WIN, LOSE, OR RIOT
BY ALEKSANDAR HEMON |
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When your team is out on the field, it becomes more than just a game.
I watched my first World Cup in 1974. Yugoslavia, my then homeland, was playing, and as many a ten-year-old soccer-crazed patriot would, I passionately supported the national team. One of its games on the way to defeat was against Poland. I still distinctly remember the bright-green pitch, the white-and-red jerseys of the Polish team, the blue, red, and white of the Yugoslav team—even though I watched it on a black-and-white TV. I was insanely involved: I rolled on the floor and screamed with every missed chance, I beat my chest with every decision against us, while my frightened mother tried to calm me down, claiming it was just a game, and I damned her to hell for not understanding its importance. Needless to say, Yugoslavia was losing because of a grave |
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and systematic injustice. How else could we lose when we had my passion to drive us forward? It quickly became clear to me that it was all because of the referee, who made all of his decisions against us, because he for some reason obviously hated us. Even the Poles, I thought, were appalled by the ref’s blatant bias. At one point, the Polish player Gorgon (who looked like a Slavic god: wide-shouldered and strong, complete with blond locks) was taking his time with a free kick. It appeared that even he was so disgusted with the evil ref that he was refusing to restart the game, out of sheer solidarity peculiar to the Slavs, well acquainted with injustice in this wicked world.
Shortly thereafter, naturally, I realized that the ref was disinterested, that Gorgon was willing to do anything to win the game for his team, and that Yugoslavia was a lousy, loser country and was deservedly defeated. But blessed are the |
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KAUNAS, LITHUANIA, 2002
Lithuanian soccer fans attack German
fans before a Euro 2004 qualifying
game. Afterward, three injured
Germans sought medical attention. |
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PHOTO BY CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI |
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childhood days when it is possible to see the world neatly divided between right and wrong, between the evil ref and the rest of us! How glorious it was to live with the conviction that we were always right! That’s why I remember that day: it may have been the last time I was unquestionably on the right side, and sweet was the comfort of righteousness.
A few years ago, playing in an acrimonious soccer game that I largely spent screaming at everyone else, I got into a fight with a young man named Clemente. He said something about my sister in a disrespectful manner and I kicked him in the head. I could feel the ridge of my foot catching his cheek. Of course, I was horribly sorry later, but there was a moment (and that moment was simultaneous with kicking Clemente) when I was at perfect peace, somewhere deep inside my fury, somewhere in the tranquil space of unmitigated self-righteousness. After a lifetime of insult and injury—or so I felt |
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| IT MAY HAVE BEEN THE LAST TIME I WAS UNQUESTIONABLY ON THE RIGHT SIDE, AND SWEET WAS THE COMFORT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. |
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in that instant—here was an occasion to let all that accumulated anger go: Clemente took it in the head because of something that had begun, a long time ago, with an evil referee.
These photos appear to have been taken between waves of anger and violence. What is fascinating about them, despite the obviously crude, mindless fury, is that they freeze the moment of brutality into the simultaneous moment of silent stillness. The aggression is stopped for an instant, and an instant later it will go on, but in the meantime everything is rightly and righteously what it is. Something that may have never fully existed—a moment of tranquility between the blows—becomes visible in the image of a suspended moment, like those superfast subatomic particles that leave faint, evanescent traces, from which their existence can only be inferred or imagined.
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BUENOS AIRES, 2002
Chacarita soccer club fans
confront the police |
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PHOTO BY FERDINANDO SCIANNA |
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LOS ANGELES, 2000
Lakers fans flip over a news van
after the lakers win the National
Basketball Association (NBA) finals. |
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PHOTO BY HANS GUTKNECHT |
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LOS ANGELES, 2000
Lakers fan celebrates. |
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PHOTO BY SAM MIRCOVICH |
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COPENHAGEN, 2000
Turkish Galatasaray soccer fans
attack supporter of rival club
arsenal before teams face off in
UEFA Cup final. |
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PHOTO BY ASGER CARLSEN |
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BELGRADE, SERBIA, 2000
Red Star Belgrade soccer fans
riot during a game against partizan
Belgrade team. Their gripe: Partizan
managers are Milosevic supporters. |
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PHOTO BY THOMAS JOUANNEAU |
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BOMBAY, 2003
Indian cricket fans
burn posters of Indian
players to protest their
team’s poor performance
against Australia in the
Cricket World Cup. |
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PHOTO BY RAJESH NIRGUDE |
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ATHENS, 2003
AEK’s Athens fans attack riot
police with stadium seats during
a championship soccer match,
AEK vs. Olympiakos Piraeus. |
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ATHENS, 1997
Police drag away a Panathinaikos Athens
fan with his own scarf after violence breaks
out between supporters of the team and
supporters of rival Olympiakos Piraeus. |
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PHOTO BY GREGORY CHRISOCHOIDIS |
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