Violence grows in football, and researchers point to an old cause: impunity

A clash between São Paulo and Corinthians fans, on Saturday (5), at the Primavera-Interlagos station on line 9-Emerald, caused the fall of an eight-month-old baby who was in his mother’s arms on the train tracks. The child had a fracture to the head and is hospitalized for observation.

Five people involved in the fight were heard at the 101st DP and released. Nobody was arrested.

In Belo Horizonte, at least 50 fans from Atlético-MG and Cruzeiro participated in war scenes in the Boa Vista neighborhood, on Sunday (6). They attacked each other with sticks, stones and firearms. A Cruzeiro was shot and died.

Only two were arrested, but the shooter, despite being identified by the police, is on the run.

This year Brazil has seen an escalation of cases of violence related to football. Researchers heard by sheet state that several factors contribute to the frequency of episodes, but point to impunity as one of the main elements for this scenario.

Security consultant and former national secretary of Public Security, José Vicente da Silva argues that the problem is directly linked to the feeling of lack of punishment among offenders.

“The Fan Statute is strict in relation to control measures. But the impression we have is that it is not applied very much”, he says.​ “Whoever is breaking the law has to be reached by it. 20, take two. These two will serve as an example for the other 18”, he adds.

As a counterpoint, Silva highlights the behavior of the British government in the face of numerous cases of violence recorded, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, with “hooligans”. “In England, the justice system even arrested 3,000 fans in a year. Here, you don’t see even 30 punished in the whole of Brazil”, he compares.

In 2013, a report produced by a special envoy of the sheet London showed that, in the 2000s, around 46,000 fans were arrested in the ten years since the creation of the law that tightened the control of “hooligans”.

The main conducts that led to arrests were: public disorder, alcohol abuse, violent behavior and lawn trespass.

According to lawyer Rodrigo Marrubia, a specialist in sports law, the Fan Statute already provides for punishments for similar cases in Brazil. “What differentiates Europe from Brazil and, consequently, the result experienced, is the effective application of the standard”, he says.

He argues that strict compliance with the laws is more effective than measures such as the adoption of single fans, as has been the case in São Paulo, for example, since 2016.

“It should be noted that Europe makes excellent use of technology to monitor the application of laws in stadiums, which would certainly be the great example to be imported by Brazil to reduce violence”, says Marrubia.

For the delegate of Drade (Delegacia for Repression of Sports Crimes), Civil Police Department of São Paulo, Cesar Antônio Saad, the adoption of a single crowd reduced violence in the stadiums, but transferred the clashes to the periphery and other public places, such as train and subway stations.

“Because of the single crowd, they end up setting up ambushes in several places. And they are almost always without identification. All this to try to circumvent the investigation”, says Saad.

In addition to monitoring by cameras in various parts of the state and in the stadiums, he says that the registration of fans by biometrics is being studied in São Paulo. “This will make it a lot easier for us,” he says.

An annual survey carried out by the Universo Masters Research Center, coordinated by Mauricio Murad, PhD in sociology of sport, shows that, in 11 years (2009 to 2019), at least 157 deaths were recorded involving fights between fans of clubs that played in the period the three main divisions of the Brazilian Championship.

Murad states, in an article published with three other researchers, that “violence in Brazilian football has grown over the years due to the deepening of violent social contexts, impunity and the neglect of the authorities in the country”.

Professor Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda, a researcher in Social Sciences at FGV, also sees the Covid-19 pandemic as a new component that ended up increasing the violence of the fans.

“During the period when the fans were away from the stadiums, they managed to attract a positive agenda, with the social actions that many organized groups did”, he quotes. “Ironically, the moment they are able to go to the stadiums again, there is an effect as if it were a spring that was repressed and there is this impetus of violence”, he concludes.

Alex Minduín, founder of Anatorg (National Association of Organized Supporters of Brazil), reinforces the role of the State in increasing violence. “Society is violent, and these young people are a reflection of the pressure that society is going through at the moment. This involves lack of investment in education, unemployment, lack of access to basic day-to-day issues, lack of leisure, entertainment and culture,” he says.

For him, “when all this is lacking, the space for negative questions is open”.

The lawyer who specializes in fan rights Renan Bohus identifies that there is a stigma about fans. And he ponders that the violence seen among the fans is observed in several other aspects.

“Most of these people who fight in football are the same people who fight in society. It’s the guy who attacks a woman, who attacks the other traffic driver, who attacks that person who has a different political opinion from his. to understand that this is a social field.”

For Flávio de Campos, a professor in the history department at USP (University of São Paulo), there are two types of factors that help to understand violence in football: the particular ones, linked to rivalries, and the general ones, which connect themes linked to violence. society. “We tend to see football as something separate from society, and it’s not,” he says.

“Football is a window where individuals express collective behavior. And we are at a time when the extreme right is on the rise in the world, and it is a racist, xenophobic, sexist, sexist and homophobic extreme right. football”, says Campos, who coordinates the Ludens laboratory (Interdisciplinary Center for Studies on Football and Ludic Modalities).