Asylum Run by the Inmates

Probably you've heard about the deaths at a soccer game in Port Said, Egypt a few days back: Seventy-four people were killed during the riot. The Egyptians are blaming the army for it.


Really?


If you look at the graphic, you'll see some pretty interesting numbers, staring in the 1960s and moving our way. More than a thousand people have been killed in soccer stadium disasters, most of these stampedes or crushes. 


In a stampede, you fall down and the herd stomps you to death like a bug; in a crush, you get pressed against a locked gate or door and squashed like a bug. Plus there are some who are killed by falling debris, such as an overloaded wall, and the odd person now and then who gets battered to death by somebody flailing away to keep from getting squashed or stomped. Assorted heart attacks and strokes, probably, too.


Sunday afternoon at the morgue with George ...


You'll note these incidents are worldwide, save for a couple of conspicuous exceptions: Nobody in North America, nor Australia. Not that many people in the U.S. jam into stadiums for soccer, and, of course, it's too cold in Canada to riot, plus the Canadians are too polite. The Aussies are as looney tunes as the rest of the world when it comes to sports, but maybe they've just been lucky.


What I get from this? Soccer fans are fuckin' crazy. I mean, wouldn't you just, you know, stay in your damned seat until the place cleared out? Lot easier to step around a few bodies after the mob finishes the slaughter, you think?


Better yet, don't go there in the first place. Watch it on TV. and listen to that crazy announcer go: "Scooooooorrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee!" Which is the most exciting thing about watching soccer anyhow. Drying paint or grass growing are surely more interesting to anybody who isn't born and raised watching the sport. Camera is a thousand yards away to include all the players, who look like manic ants darting hither and yon ...