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THE FOOTBALL QUARTERLY / ISSUE FOUR
Sample Edition
The following is a free sample of Issue
One of The Blizzard, including excerpts
from some of its articles, the notes from
the editor and a full list of its contents.
Our full issues run to 190+ pages, so
while this only off ers you a snapshot, it’s
hopefully enough to pique your interest
for more.
What is The Blizzard?
As our editor, Jonathan Wilson, put it at
the launch of our pilot issue:
“I can’t have been the only one who
felt journalism as a whole was missing
something, that there should be more
space for more in-depth pieces, for
detailed reportage, history and analysis.
Was there a way to accommodate articles
of several thousand words? Could we do
something that was neither magazine nor
book, but somewhere in between?
“The Blizzard is not the organ of any one
individual. Rather it aims to provide a
platform for writers, British and foreign,
to write about football-related subjects
important to them, be that at the
highest level or the lowest, at home or
abroad. Eclecticism is the key. There is
no attempt to impose an editorial line;
all opinions expressed are those of the
individual author.
“The priority is the product rather than
profi t; the aim is to remain true to our
ethos and to provide an alternative to
that which already exists.”
At The Blizzard, we like to be adaptable.
That’s why we off er up our football
quarterly not only as a digital download
for you to pore over on your phone,
tablet or e-reader, but also give you
the option to let our lovely, textual
creations adorn your coff ee table,
bookshelf or bathroom in their
beautiful hard copy format.
Pay-what-you-like
And because we’re not only adaptable
but also friendly, we want you all (yes,
all of you) to read what we’ve got to
say. We’re so friendly, in fact, that we
operate on a pay-what-you-like basis,
and have done since day one. Our
digital download editions start from
as little as 1p each, which means you
could download the whole of our back
catalogue for less than the price of
the skinniest of skinny lattes, while our
hard copy editions can be yours from
£6 (+ P&P).
If you like what you see over the following
pages, visit www.theblizzard.co.uk to fi nd
out more.
Issue Four - Sample Edition
Contents
6
Introduction04. Editor’s Note
Barcelona09. Graham Hunter, The Inverted Sheepdog
The inside story of how Xavi emerged as
the central hub of the world’s greatest
team
24. David Winner, Corrida of Uncertainty
How the cruelty of tiki-taka resembles
bull-fi ghting
28. Scott Oliver, The Other Rival, Another Way
When the nastiest rivalry in Spain was
between Barcelona and Athletic
Interview40. Alex Ferguson
Sir Alex Ferguson tells Philippe Auclair
about his early start, the importance of
continuity and his need to be alone
London
49. Ian Hawkey, Capital Failings
Football clubs in democratic capitals
tend to underperform and London is no
exception
53. Martin Cloake, A Very English Visionary
How the understated radicalism of
Arthur Rowe defi ned Tottenham’s style
66. Nick Szczepanik, South of the River
For a spell in the eighties, Charlton
Athletic, Crystal Palace, Millwall and
Wimbledon challenged the elite
71. Bob Yule, The Bald Eagle and the Modern Way
How Jim Smith brought the 3-5-2 to
Queen’s Park Rangers
Theory75. Patrick Dessault, Deschamps- Suaudeau
Didier Deschamps and Jean-Claude
Suaudeau debate the modern vogue for
attacking football
88. Sam Kelly, The New Enganche
Javier Pastore talks about his move to
Paris Saint-Germain and living up to the
playmaking ideal
Africa93. Pablo Manriquez and Backpagepix, Unlikely Hosts, Unlikelier Winners
Images from the 2012 African
Cup of Nations.
ContentsThe Blizzard, Issue Four
Contents
7
151. Robert Langham, Continental Drift
Kazakhstan has slipped behind
Uzbekistan since it abandoned Asia
Football Manager156. The Ballad of Bobby Manager:
My Autobiography
When somebody takes their game
of Football Manager just a little too
seriously...
Greatest Games169. Dan Edwards, Racing 1 Celtic 0
Intercontinental Cup fi nal play off ,
Estadio Centenario, Montevideo, 4
November 1967
Eight Bells184. Scott Murray, Shirt Tales
The history behind a selection of iconic
kits
Information
120. T-shirts194. Contributors196. Subcriptions197. About The Blizzard
100. Jonathan Wilson, Victory Song
How Zambia’s emotional triumph
restored the zest to the Cup of Nations
122. Gary Al-Smith, The Barefoot Pioneers
CK Gyamfi explains how a bootless tour
to Britain helped shape the game in
Ghana
126. David Lynch, Ultra Violence
After the horrors of Port Said, the exact
role of ultras in the downfall of Hosny
Mubarak remains unclear
In Appreciation Of134. Sheridan Bird, Ronaldo in
Moscow
A slalom though the Luzhniki mud
confi rmed the genius of O Fenomeno
137. Juliet Jacques, Toussaint on Zidane
What the World Cup fi nal headbutt
meant to the Belgian writer
Polemics143. Pete Grathoff , Pelé v Beckham
Which of the icons had the greater
impact on football in the USA?
147. Brian Phillips, The Other Cup
How do you solve a problem like the
Europa League?
I’d barely sat down in the media centre
before the Cup of Nations fi nal when a
Nigerian journalist grabbed my arm and
dragged me over to “look at something
on my laptop”. She’d taken footage of the
Patrice Evra-Luis Suárez non-handshake,
had slowed it down and magnifi ed it, and
was insisting you could see the Frenchman
fractionally withdraw his hand as the
Uruguayan approached. She played it over
and over again, the same pictures of hand
approaching hand and no contact being
made. Is that really what we’ve become?
In the previous week Fabio Capello had
resigned over the John Terry aff air and
Harry Redknapp had been acquitted of
charges of tax evasion, prompting a series of
speculative pieces about who he might pick
should he be the new England manager.
Within days, Rangers and Portsmouth had
gone into administration.
All the while I looked on in bewilderment
from Equatorial Guinea and then Gabon,
following Zambia’s sentimental journey
to the Cup of Nations crown and feeling
extremely grateful I wasn’t having to deal
with the tawdry minutiae of football back
home. Instead, I watched an awful lot of
men cry, because they felt they had let
their country down, because they saw their
country being torn apart and, ultimately,
from the catharsis of having won a fi nal in
the city in which their country suff ered its
worst football tragedy.
Stories like Zambia’s happen only
infrequently, of course, but it was still hard to
wonder, reading the abuse that fl owed back
and forth on every Suárez blog, whether we
in Britain hadn’t lost sight of what actually
matters about sport: the sense of emotion
and drama and human striving to achieve
something extraordinary.
And then you look at the Guardian blogs
and you see my Cup of Nations pieces
drawing 20 or 30 comments while anything
on Capello or Suárez gets several hundred.
It’s not hard to see the economic argument
for focussing on the mainstream and the
sensationalist or why so many other papers
barely seemed to acknowledge the Cup of
Nations was happening.
That, of course, is why The Blizzard exists,
to cater for minority tastes neglected by
more traditional media. Last March, when
we launched, we didn’t know whether
enough others shared our interest in the
in-depth and the esoteric to make the
magazine economically viable. Thanks to
the hard work of huge numbers of people,
we’re still here.
As we celebrate our fi rst anniversary, we’re
much more optimistic, but we need to keep
pushing. I know I say this in every issue, but
please do keep talking about us, do keep
telling people what we’re about. We have
no advertising budget: word of mouth is all
we’ve got. Thanks.
March 2012
Editor’s NoteJonathan Wilson, Editor
“The Hutterites are
convinced hell is directly
underneath the Reeperbahn.”
6St Pauli
“...the thriving atmosphere at Tottenham,
the atmosphere of good football for the
sake of good football.”
48London
for all four clubs, achieving their exalted
status was a considerable achievement.
Millwall had been promoted to the top
echelon for the fi rst time in their 103-
year history a year earlier under the
Glaswegian John Docherty, enabling
them to welcome, if that is the word,
the aristocrats of English football to
the bear-pit that was the old Den. With
Teddy Sheringham and Tony Cascarino a
potent spearhead, they had even topped
the fi rst division table after beating
QPR 3-2 on 1 October 1988, eventually
fi nishing a very respectable tenth, even if
it was their lowest position of the season.
Wimbledon were relatively old hands,
having gone up in 1986, but their elevation
had taken far less time. They had been in
the Football League for only eight seasons
when they reached the top, and Plough
Lane was still more or less a non-league
ground. Charlton had come up alongside
Millwall, which was a staggering feat
bearing in mind that they were eff ectively
homeless, groundsharing with newly-
promoted Palace, who were on one of the
upswings of their yo-yo existence.
If it all seems hard to imagine, remember
that this was not today’s glitzy Premier
League of full, all-seated stadiums and
player wages funded by television deals
and wealthy benefactors. Facilities were
South London, to fans who came to the
game with the advent of the Premier
League in 1992, probably seems rather
similar in football terms to, say, East
Anglia — not exactly a hotbed, but with
one or two clubs who occasionally
spend a season or two among the elite
before sinking back to their natural level.
You can see why. Crystal Palace seem
to have a new board, manager and kit
every season and have been as likely to
fi le for administration as challenge for
promotion. Charlton Athletic’s tenure
in the top fl ight is beginning to fade
from memory although Chris Powell’s
rebuilt team is promising an upturn in
fortunes. Millwall look relatively stable
without threatening to bring their, er,
unique following to a Premier League
stadium near you. And AFC Wimbledon
are widely admired but may soon hit
the ceiling of what a fan-owned club
can achieve after winning promotion to
League Two last season.
It was not always thus. In 1989, Palace’s
promotion to the old fi rst division under
Steve Coppell meant that all four of the
capital’s league clubs based south of the
Thames were looking forward to spending
the 1989-90 season in the top fl ight
together. This state of glory lasted a single
campaign — Charlton and Millwall were
relegated at the end of the season — but
South of the RiverFor a spell in the eighties, Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace, Millwall and Wimbledon challenged the elite
By Nick Szczepanik
South of the River
66
extremely basic, with more fans standing
than sitting, and corporate facilities
unknown. Even in densely-populated
south London, Palace in that 1988-89
season attracted an average gate of only
17,105. Millwall drew 12,454, Charlton’s
10,978 was the highest of their four
seasons at Selhurst and Wimbledon,
despite the highest league placing of the
four, had the lowest crowds, an average
of 7,651.
On such gates, managers often had to
hunt for bargain signings or raid the non-
league ranks where now top-fl ight clubs
would simply look abroad. But in a year
in which Arsenal, the champions, did not
have a single foreign player and Sergei
Baltacha of Ipswich Town counted as an
exotic import, it could be done.
“It was a golden era for South
London clubs,” the Palace assistant
manager Lenny Lawrence, then the
manager of Charlton, said. “I think it was
the management. Steve Coppell did a great
job at Palace, Johnny Doc at Millwall, Dave
Bassett at Wimbledon and then Bobby
Gould and eventually Joe Kinnear.
“When you are a club of the size that
Charlton or Millwall were then, everything
has got to come right, on and off the
pitch. Palace were more of a top-fl ight
club than any of the rest of us, and even
then Steve Coppell had to get them up
through the playoff s. But it came right for
us too, and even though we were playing
at Selhurst and it was diffi cult, we spent
more years in the top fl ight in the late
eighties than Newcastle, Sunderland and
Middlesbrough put together.”
Docherty is the least well-remembered
of the managers. Cascarino, whom he
signed from Gillingham, recalls a man
with the eccentricity of a Brian Clough:
“Sometimes he’d call you up at home,
tell you to come into his offi ce and you’d
think he’d want to discuss something,
but then he’d just want to have a drink
with you. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Tell me
your best team,’ and when you did he’d
say, ‘So you’d drop him, would you?’ and
tell the other bloke, ‘He said he wouldn’t
play you.’
“He was a real wind-up merchant, he
loved playing games. But John was very
sure of himself and what he wanted, and
he got a kick out of being disliked, in a
strange, dark way. But I liked him, he was
very good for me. I think he found it very
hard to leave Millwall when the time came
because he loved being around the club.”
Alan Pardew, now the manager of
Newcastle United but then a midfi eld
player with Palace, remembers 1989-90
as “probably my best year in football”.
The season began unpromisingly with
a 9-0 defeat by Liverpool, but ended
with an FA Cup fi nal appearance against
Manchester United, Pardew’s winning
goal against Liverpool in the semi-
fi nal extracting maximum revenge
for that earlier thrashing. But he also
recalls the less glamorous side of those
days. “Although there were great venues
like Highbury and Anfi eld, Plough
Lane and the Den had very diff erent
atmospheres, even for the players —
aggressive, with the fans close to the
pitch and the teams in your face. The
sort of things that went on in the tunnel
couldn’t happen now with all the TV
cameras around. Plough Lane was a
unique environment. It was amazing
that Wimbledon played at that level with
the facilities they had. Their success was
67
Nick Szczepanik
68
“And the derbies were intense,” Pardew
said. “With so many foreign players
nowadays, a little bit has gone out of
many derbies. You knew so many of the
other players then, and because you
were probably local, your friends and
family would emphasise how important
the games were. My cousin was a
massive Millwall fan, and he couldn’t wait
for derbies so that he could laugh at me.
We’re supposed to be professional but
these things have an impact.”
But many of those behind that success
feel that the depressed and relatively
disorganised state of football at the
time helped the south London sides to
compete. “We actually nicked boys from
the Arsenal and Tottenham areas,” Terry
Burton, the former Wimbledon assistant
manager, said. “We had a centre in the
Tottenham area, and it was fair game.
Our selling point was that we would give
youngsters the chance to play.”
As the fi nancial stakes were raised,
though, rival clubs north of the river and
beyond got their acts together, and the
clubs face stiff er competition for local
talent than before. When Harry Redknapp
became manager of West Ham United,
one of his most important early signings
was Jimmy Hampson, a West Ham fan
who had been scouting for Charlton.
This is a Sample Edition - the full version
of this article appears in Issue Four of
The Blizzard.
The Blizzard is available on a pay-what-
you-like basis in both download and hard
copy formats from www.theblizzard.co.uk.
more sustained than ours and you have
to admire that. Charlton were sharing
Selhurst with us, although apart from
a couple of Portakabins you wouldn’t
have noticed they were there. I know
from managing them later that it was a
time that they don’t look back on with
much pleasure.”
Lawrie Sanchez, who had scored
Wimbledon’s winning goal in the FA
Cup fi nal a year earlier, believes that his
team’s basic facilities worked in their
favour. “We used to train on Wimbledon
Common, share breakfast in the
transport café with lorry drivers, and
anyone could walk across our pitches
with the dog. But if going to places like
Highbury was a culture shock for us
after that, then coming to us was more
of a culture shock for the other teams.
The changing rooms and surroundings
weren’t the best, and the ground was
very intimate and intimidating.
“We used to kick off , roll the ball back
to Dave Beasant and he would launch it
to the edge of the opponents’ penalty
area and that’s what they could expect
for the next 90 minutes. It was ironic
that Plough Lane had a superb playing
surface, which the ball hardly ever
touched. But eventually we had to leave.
An all-seater stadium with a minimum
capacity was a requirement for the
Premier League.”
As anyone who has to negotiate
south London traffi c will tell you, the
number of derbies was not so much
of a convenience as the neutral might
expect. “It took us less time to get to
Watford than round the South Circular to
Millwall,” Sanchez recalled.
South of the River
“It’s because they practise their scales
all day long.”
74Theory
Deschamps-Suaudeau
Shortly before Manchester United
and Barcelona played last season’s
Champions League fi nal, Patrick
Dessault, one of France Football’s
senior reporters, boarded a plane in
Nantes with Jean-Claude Suaudeau,
a player, educator, coach and tutelar
fi gure whose name is inseparable from
the history of FC Nantes over the past
half-century. Both men were travelling
to Marseilles to meet another alumnus
of the école nantaise, the Olympique
Marseille manager Didier Deschamps,
48 hours before the current Ligue 1
champions were to play Olympique
Lyonnais in a game that could
prove decisive in the title race. That
Deschamps was willing to sacrifi ce as
much as half a day of his preparations
to entertain a journalist and a retired
manager tells all that needs to be told
about the reverence in which he holds
his former mentor.
“For me,” Deschamps said when
welcoming his guests in a Cassis
restaurant, “this is not work, this is a
rare privilege,” as it was for those who
read the transcript of that afternoon’s
conversation in the magazine over
the next couple of weeks. It ran a full
16 pages, which Dessault and France
Football have graciously allowed The
Blizzard to edit and translate for the
benefi t of English speakers. This was
not an easy task, as even subjects that
could have been deemed too topical
for publication many months after the
exchange took place carried a resonance
that went way beyond the here and now.
Another diffi culty was to remain faithful
to the tone of the conversation, which
is quite unlike any other interview I have
ever come across — as it would, since,
strictly speaking, what you’re about to
read is not an interview. Dessault wisely
chose to remain in the background
and listen, fi lling Deschamps’s and
Suaudeau’s glasses with the provençal
rosé the elder had chosen from an
enviable wine list. “He was my rampart,”
the ex-manager said of the stocky young
Basque whom he fi rst coached when DD
was 12 years old. “When he [Suaudeau]
noticed me at the window of the young
players’ dormitory,” Didier remembered,
“he’d stop and talk. It could go on for a
whole hour.” Picture the scene: a coach
discussing the routines he’d devised for
the next training session with a teenager
who was 30 years his junior.
Deschamps addressed his former
mentor as vous, while calling him by his
nickname ‘Coco’ (who stuck to the more
familiar tu throughout), a signifi cant
nuance that indicated that the pupil,
while deferring to the master, was now
his equal in terms of professional status
and, some would argue, his superior
Deschamps-Suaudeau Didier Deschamps and Jean-Claude Suaudeau debate the modern vogue for attacking football
By Patrick Dessault
75
in terms of achievement. All Suaudeau
has to show for 37 years spent with
the Canaris, from 1960 to 1997, are
four league titles, two as a defensive
midfi elder (1965, 1966) and two as their
manager (1983, 1995). Deschamps,
by contrast, can boast of a collection
of honours that makes him the most
successful fi gure (as both player and
manager) in French football history.
European and World champion with Les
Bleus, the fi rst player to reach 100 caps
for France, the winner of 13 major club
titles — most of them as captain — with
OM, Juventus and Chelsea, including
two Champions Leagues. As a manager,
he hasn’t done too badly either: he took
Monaco to the fi nal of the Champions
League in 2004, oversaw Juventus’s
immediate return to the elite — as Serie B
champions — after their demotion in the
wake of the calciopoli scandal in 2007,
and led Marseille to a domestic double
in 2010 (not forgetting the 2011 League
Cup). All this, and he’s only 43.
However, were you to ask any leading
fi gure in the French game which of
the two men is the greater manager,
Suaudeau would be an almost unanimous
choice. A genius, many would say,
perhaps the deepest thinker our country
has produced in this fi eld, with only Albert
Batteux for company. He did not invent
the jeu à la nantaise: his predecessor
José Arribas was its progenitor in the
1960s, with Coco both an executor and
a student of it fi rst on the fi eld, then
as head of the club’s academy; but
Suaudeau refi ned a style of play into a
system, which he worked on as tirelessly
and as imaginatively as Helenio Herrera
tuned Inter. At home, Suaudeau’s 1982-
83 team, of which the rest of Europe saw
close to nothing1, is still considered one
of the fi nest club sides, if not the fi nest,
to have ever won the French league
title. It couldn’t quite match Valeriy
Lobanovskyi’s Dynamo Kyiv as far as
results were concerned, but it exuded the
same kind of beauty, poetry balancing
mechanics, and added a certain sense
of reckless joy to this glorious equation.
The 1994-95 incarnation of Nantes,
though less technically accomplished2,
was only one game away from emulating
Ajax, Milan and Arsenal and completing
a domestic league season unbeaten.
Suaudeau’s tragedy (the word would not
seem too strong to his admirers) was
that FC Nantes simply couldn’t hold on
to its best players, who inevitably left for
richer clubs as soon as a trophy had been
won. Those players, almost to a man,
had been trained in the club’s academy
by Suaudeau himself. Perhaps Coco’s
true list of honours is the names of the
players (José Touré, Marcel Desailly, Didier
Deschamps, Claude Makélélé — whom
he was the fi rst to deploy in the role that
76
Deschamps-Suaudeau
1 A disastrous 3-0 loss in the away leg of their tie with Rapid Vienna saw Nantes exit the 1983-84
European Cup in the fi rst round.
2 How could players of lesser skill still play ‘à la nantaise’? Suaudeau’s answer to that question appears
paradoxical, but is typical of his approach: “We sped it up, we played at 100 miles per hour,” he said.
Patterns of open play that he’d imagined while walking his two dogs in the training ground would
be rehearsed — like set pieces — until the players no longer had to think to execute them. “He
composed the music, the players played the score,” as Dessault, a Nantais himself, likes to say.
now bears his name), Maxime Bossis,
Christian Karembeu, and so many others)
he shaped on the concrete pitches of La
Jonellière. He taught them a ravishing
one-touch football that, at its best,
deserved to be ranked with that played at
the Camp Nou today. It is no coincidence
that the fi rst subject that Suaudeau
wished to broach with Deschamps was
Guardiola’s team, as the values which are
now associated with the Catalan club
are precisely those for which his Nantes
became France’s best-loved club when
Suaudeau was its manager.
Philippe Auclair
Deschamps: It’s impossible to play against
Barça ‘in the short term’. They’ve played
together for fi ve, six, seven years: their
game is second nature for them. When
you see the way they move and how
they’ve managed to pass on this message
to players who come from all kinds of
backgrounds, that’s impressive. Elsewhere,
a coach isn’t given that time. The policy is
diff erent. It’s every manager’s dream, but
you’ve got to be realistic: yes, it’s lovely to
watch them play, to dream of emulating
them — but you’ve got to have the players
to play that game. And everything stems
from the academy. Coco, at Nantes, when
we joined the pros, we’d already spent
four years together in the reserves.
Suaudeau: Barça are the strongest
because their midfi eld is the strongest.
Deschamps: The midfi eld battle...
Suaudeau: A game is won in midfi eld.
Only the midfi elders are able to fi nd the
right way to play. They are the animators.
They are the inspiration. The more
players of that kind you’ve got, the more
you can hope to win in the long term.
Deschamps: I don’t agree. What matters
are the two zones of truth. In today’s
football, if you’ve got a great keeper and
a great striker, you’re not that far from
victory. Of course, you shouldn’t have
muppets in midfi eld!
Suaudeau: I disagree.
Deschamps: OK, Coco, I know what
you’re thinking: it’s impossible to fi ght
against the collective power of the
Catalans, therefore...
Suaudeau: Dead right. Barça are super-
strong in one area: anticipation. That’s the
most diffi cult thing to pass on to players
when they’re very good. At Barcelona,
even the smallest guy gets his hands dirty
and is to be feared when they try to get
the ball back. That’s where Barça made
the diff erence when they beat Real Madrid
5-0. Dédé, that’s the ultimate truth — that
was my truth too. I’d come to the point
when I conceived my attacking game as
based on getting the ball back... and when
the attacker becomes a defender, eh?
This is a Sample Edition - the full version
of this article appears in Issue Four of
The Blizzard.
The Blizzard is available on a pay-what-
you-like basis in both download and hard
copy formats from www.theblizzard.co.uk.
77
Patrick Dessault
“And that’s when the thought
occurred that this wasn’t a road at
all but an airstrip”
92Africa
Ultra Violence
A taxi drove past fast, swerving
erratically, along the main road by the
west bank of the River Nile. Insane
driving is not unique in Cairo, but what I
saw hanging out the backseat window of
this particular taxi was certainly unusual.
On the right-hand side, one young man
stretched out as far his waist, and held
aloft the massive red and white fl ag of
Egypt’s most successful club — Ahly. The
boastful tagline “Club of the Century” was
displayed proudly under the club’s crest.
On the other side another young
daredevil, was almost sitting outside the
open window of the speeding vehicle. He
held high above his head the white and
red fl ag of Ahly’s big city foes — Zamalek.
Fans normally sharply divided, sharing this
early morning taxi.
Sadly what had inspired this moment of
solidarity were events the night before,
events which have seared themselves into
a national Egyptian consciousness already
reeling from a year of revolutionary
turmoil. The deaths of more than 70 fans
in the Port Said Stadium on Wednesday
1 February ranks as the worst tragedy in
Egyptian football history, and takes its
grim place among the most horrifi c nights
in global football.
The exact facts of what occurred in Port
Said are disputed and a government
investigation has been launched. But
some core details are clear.
The Cairo giants Al-Ahly brought a large
travelling support to an away game
against Al-Masry in Port Said. Some home
“fans” were apparently allowed to enter
the stadium carrying weapons. As the fi nal
whistle blew on a shock defeat for Ahly,
hundreds of Masry fans spilled onto the
pitch and attacked opposition players and
supporters. Security forces did little or
nothing to prevent this.
Outnumbered, the Ahly fans attempted
to fl ee, but gates were shut. Fans
reportedly died from stabbings and from
being crushed. Violence is not unknown
at Egyptian soccer games, but not on
this scale.
Some Egyptians regard Port Said as
the horrifi c consequences of lawless
football hooliganism.
But in Cairo, that was most certainly not
how many people view it.
The Ahly Ultras blame the police and
even charge them with co-ordinating
the assault. In the days after the tragedy
they took to the streets and clashed
with police near the Ministry of Interior
in downtown Cairo. The accusation
of police coordination was supported
126
Ultra ViolenceAfter the horrors of Port Said, the exact role of ultras in the downfall of Hosny Mubarak remains unclear
By David Lynch
by the Muslim Brotherhood and
others in the days after the event. The
Brotherhood accused elements in the
police force as still loyal to the former
dictator Hosni Mubarak.
The truth is diffi cult to ascertain — there
were arrests and resignations in the days
after — but almost the more important
question is why so many Egyptians
blame “forces against the revolution” for
what happened in Port Said.
The answer to that is found in the heady
revolutionary days of 2011.
A heavy cloud of tear gas hung over a
Tahrir Square in revolt. Buckling under the
pressure of thousands of protestors, the
epicentre of the Egyptian revolution was
unleashing a roar of resistance into the
Cairo night. Two days previously, an attack
by the security forces on Tahrir had begun
a period of violence that left more than
40 people dead and hundreds injured.
It was late November and what became
known, to some, as the “second Egyptian
revolution” was at its most intense.
The revolutionary youth who had
made Tahrir their home chanted angry
slogans against the Egyptian military
rulers, the Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces (SCAF). Following the
collapse of the Hosni Mubarak regime
in early 2011, the military had stepped in
to lead what they called “the transition
to civilian rule”. From the beginning,
many of the revolutionaries were wary
of the military’s true intentions and,
as the months dragged on and no
transition materialised, those suspicions
turned to anger.
But that was not the half of it.
The revolutionary youth who had
participated in most of the fi ghting
(and dying) that brought an end to
decades of Mubarak rule looked on with
increasing disbelief at the actions of
SCAF — thousands of civilians brought
before military tribunals, the extension
of the ‘Emergency Law’ damned by
Amnesty International as “the greatest
erosion of human rights since the
resignation of Hosny Mubarak”, the
jailing of opposition activists and the
failure to prosecute members of the
former ruling National Democratic Party
(NDP). The trial of Mubarak and his sons
was slow and disregarded as a sham
by some. In early October there was
also the horrifi c massacre of protesting
Coptic Christians (and Muslim allies) on
the east bank of the Nile.
For those crowded around me in Tahrir
Square, two things had now become
clear — the revolution that began in
early 2011 was unfi nished and the
military, far from being a friend of
the movement, was now a counter-
revolutionary force.
As the tight knots of protestors swayed,
the political debates raged in rapid
Arabic around me, the songs of the
January 2011 revolution were being
sung, the blasts of tear gas canisters
and the incoherent rumblings of
rioting could be heard from the nearby
Muhammad Mahmoud Street. People
crushed against one another as hastily
created human corridors emerged to
allow those injured on the front line to
be rushed to fi eld hospitals.
Against this backdrop of chaos and the
sonic onslaught of revolution, one of my
127
David Lynch
companions and I conducted a halting
conversation about local football.
A fan of one of Cairo’s “big two”
clubs, he was hopeful that a couple of
disappointing early season results for
Zamalek did not necessarily mean their
cross city nemesis — Ahly — would run
away with the league. Despite the lack of
space, I struggled to raise my arm above
my waist. I pointed in the direction of the
street battles raging a few hundred metres
away in Muhammad Mahmoud Street.
“You know that many Ahly Ultras are
supposed to have been very involved
in the revolution in January?” I said,
speaking louder so he could hear me
over the incessant chorus of defi ance
around us. “They have been on the
streets during this week as well. They’re
probably fi ghting up there now.”
He swung his head around to face me.
“Not only them,” he snapped back.
“The Zamalek Ultras — the Ultra White
Knights — have been in Tahrir as well.
It’s not only Ahly fans here fi ghting for
the revolution.”
It was clear that in the extraordinary
year of the Arab Spring the sharp rivalry
between both sets of fans extended
beyond the pitch and terraces and into
the debate over who had contributed
most to the revolutionary vanguard.
Politics and sport often mix, but in the
revolutionary Egypt of 2011 the delicate
demarcation between the two worlds
dissolved completely. Ultra fan groups
released political statements, ministers
commented on the actions of the
politicised football supporters, long-
standing managers and offi cials were
slammed as cronies of the former regime
and forced out, some professional
footballers became revolutionaries and
others sat the revolution out.
Egyptians have said to me that in 2011
one national obsession, football, had
been replaced by a new one, politics and
the revolution.
“Yes, the revolution meant that people
did not just focus on football,” said Esso,
a Cairene working in advertising and a
lifelong Ahly fan.
“But this was also because the league
was stopped for some time because of
the trouble on the streets.
“Before the revolution the most
important thing for Egyptians was
football, and it will return to being the
most important thing again.”
There was some truth to this. In the heady
days after the January revolution, even
the failure of the Egyptian national team
to qualify for the African Cup of Nations
was not as crushing to the national self
esteem as it would normally have been.
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