Violence in Soccer

Violence was a major problem for FIFA (Federation International de Football Association) before they come up with the “Fair Play” and “No Racism” to stop this kind of violent behavior. October 2010, after more than twenty years of Fair plays, the North Ireland people warned over Italia – Serbia match for Europe 2012 qualification, because of political issues. Soccer and sports websites were the first interested in this negative improvement because this kind of violence may leave behind some negative attitude for football fans (shooting, fighting, stealing …). ESPN, BBC and bleacherreport. Com were the first online news which they wrote about this issue.

BBC.co.uk was the most interested in this topic. An article titled: “Northern Ireland fans warned over Serbia match” explain different point of this attack on the Serbia team. BBC chooses to post a video in the beginning of the story to show the real image of this attack. This video summarizes the violence attack and how the Serbian police handle it after that. The video is an important tool because it shows a combination of visual and audio structures to help the reader to become more familiar with the topic. A picture of Ivan Bogdanov (the heart of this attack) holding a Molotov bomb before he throws it on the field was used by BBC to gives a clue to readers about the attacker and his background. This picture is a good tool but not as good as a video, because the picture gives us one scene but the video will create a mixer of multiple ones.

Soccernet.espn.go.com and bleacherreport.com choose to post pictures in their stories about the violence during the match and after it. ESPN used multiple kinds of photos (during the match, police handle it, arrestments…) differently from bleacherreport which used only one photo that shows the attacking on the Italian goalkeeper on the soccer field.

To conclude, video is more interesting to readers than a picture, because usually fans want maximum information possible about the topic and the video can gives the real image of the story. Picture is not a bad idea in this topic because it’s shows the violence from multiple places. This story work especial it is related to soccer the most popular game in the world.

reference:

Govedarica M (2010), “Serbia hits rock bottom”, available:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/feature?id=832137&sec=euro2012&cc=3436

Unknown (2010), “Northern Ireland fans warned over Serbia match”, available:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11540346


Rinaldi G (2010), “Italy Vs. Serbia: Who Should Carry The Can For Euro 2012 Crowd Chaos?” , available:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/491054-italy-vs-serbia-who-should-carry-the-can-for-euro-2012-crowd-chaos