WHY DO we expect violence to be eliminated from our football grounds when the people who are in charge of the clubs find it almost impossible to condemn thuggish behaviour involving their fans? When we cannot take a united stand against violence, as a society, sending out mixed signals to the hooligans instead, there is next to no hope of stopping the aggressive behaviour.

On Sunday afternoon there was crowd trouble after the league tie between APOEL and AEL, whose fans have a long history of rivalry and regularly clash. Four policemen were injured as the fans hurled sticks and rocks at each other outside the ground after the end of the game. As part of the security measures, police had decided to allow the home fans to leave the ground first and asked visiting AEL fans, through the loudspeakers, to wait in the stadium. They did not, instead a small group broke down a stadium door and about 200 hooligans stormed out to clash with the home fans.

In a display of mindless irresponsibility, the AEL president, Andreas Sophocleous, blamed the violence on police security measures, expressing anger that his club’s fans were made to wait for home supporters to leave the ground! But even if the police had made a bad decision, which they did not, were the hooligans justified in breaking down a stadium door and rushing out to clash with rival fans? Obviously yes, according to Sophocleous, for whom allegedly bad policing excuses violent behaviour.

But what makes him an expert on policing football crowds? The police were absolutely correct in telling the couple of thousand visiting fans to stay in their seats until the much bigger home crowd left the ground; if they waited for half an hour they would have been escorted from the ground by police and there would have been no APOEL fans to clash with.

Sophocleous did not restrict his criticism of the police to the security measures. He also accused officers of singling out AEL fans and hitting them during the fighting. The troublemakers were turned into victims of police violence by the AEL president - they had been provoked by being made to wait (hooligans should never be made to wait) and then were beaten up.

Club officials always put the blame for violence on the police, who either did not take adequate security measure or used excessive force. In this respect, Sophocleous’ irresponsible defence of hooliganism was nothing new. But with people who publicly excuse violence running clubs is it any wonder that we are nowhere close to eradicating hooliganism from football grounds?