MustardYellow
Well-known member
- Joined
- 24 Nov 2023
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- 1,127
I had a similar conversation with a friend who works in the police. A lot of football songs incite violence, and some actually do cross the legal barrier of 'incitement'. The police just don't do anything because it's impossible to enforce - you can't arrest a whole stand of fans. Quite a lot of things in football are technically illegal but a lot deem acceptable. As an example, very few had an issue with us invading the pitch in the promotion game vs Wycombe, but technically everyone there committed a crime.erm, when exactly has it been the case that something that 'oversteps the line of legality' was acceptable?
The point I'd make is that football has always been an escape for people, where boundaries could be pushed and many of the normal social conventions don't apply (or are at least relaxed). It was one of the very few places where you could push boundaries, sing crude songs, make 'offensive' jokes, swear at strangers, shout profanities at the top of your lungs, walk down the street drink in hand chanting.
Basically, you could be a bit naughty and it wouldn't be a big deal. There was almost a 'cheekiness' to football, and 99% of the people who went expected that and accepted it - even if you didn't partake it was part of the experience.
The novelty of a lot of that is quite quickly disappearing, though. Football fans have always been 'watched' but they are now watched so intensely that a million spotlights are shone on one or two transgressions in a crowd of thousands and blown out of proportion.
Whether you think the things having spotlights shone on them is right or wrong is a different conversation, but I think it's hard to deny that such intense policing of pretty much everything is having an impact on atmosphere's.