In the UK soccer hooligans are a cultural phenomenon that have over the past few decades caused dozens of deaths and lots of social angst.  Most of the news chatter that I heard seemed to hold society as a whole and the perpetrators individually responsible for the damage and mayhem.

Now consider the aftermath of the tragic soccer riot in Port Said, Egypt.  The Egyptian press reports that the public is blaming not the individuals or the society but the army and the police.  The quote I read was “there were no police there to stop us.” It is as if they are saying we are not responsible enough to attend sporting events without an authoritarian boot nearby.  It doesn’t seem to bode well for their post Mubarak society.

But it get more complicated.  In Los Angeles a Dodger fan beat a Giants fan nearly to death after a baseball game and the press and the public are holding Frank McCourt the team’s owner responsible for not having enough security.

Of these three approaches I think that the English one is probably the best but it has a danger.  Saying something like “boys will be boys” or allowing the “social disease” excuse from West Side Story tend to over time exacerbate the problem because the “boys” start to think that they can get away with it.

A mix of competitiveness, alcohol, avid loyalty and the unhappiness of losing is sure to be volatile. So the potential of people rioting at sporting events is a condition that every society has to manage.  How they manage this emotional mix is to some extent a measure of a societies maturity.  Allowing the perpetrators a free pass by blaming the police is not an indicator of a mature society.