The dark side of the beautiful game

It may be the beautiful game, but the world’s most popular sport is also synonymous with death and destruction.

Take the qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup, for example. Earlier this month, 10 fans died before a 2010 World Cup qualifier between Gambia and Liberia at the overcrowded Samuel L. Doe stadium in Monrovia.

Shortly afterwards, a female suicide bomber in northern Iraq targeted buoyant soccer fans who had just watched their national team win their Group 1, World Cup qualifier against China, wounding at least 29 people.

Just last week, another qualifier was overshadowed after Algeria players allegedly told their Gambian opponents that they had terrorist links ahead of the return leg (Gambia won the first match 1-0).

Closer to home, Absa Premiership player of the season Elias Pelembe allegedly led a group of Mozambican players in an attack on South African referees in Madagascar in retaliation for the recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

Violence off the field has always been part of this particularly emotive sport. Colombia’s Andras Escobar paid the ultimate price for an own-goal in the 1994 World Cup. Two weeks later he was assassinated (with his killer reportedly shouting ‘goal’ for each of the 12 bullets he fired).

The 1969 war that broke out between the Central American countries of Honduras and El Salvador was inflamed by rioting during the second North American qualifying round for the 1970 World Cup.

Liverpool manager Bill Shankly’s famous observation (in the 1960s) that football was ‘much, much more important’ than life and death, has taken on extra resonance as the game’s global popularity has reached extraordinary levels.