The Imprinted Role Models
“The picture looks worse than I had thought. Something must be done…and quickly. “
The government’s national coordinator against sports-related crime, senior police officer Bjorn Eriksson, has not pulled any punches in his analysis and suggestions. Criminal infiltration and influence on sport, especially in big cities, is the grim reality nowadays. Something must be done, but the political interest to implement Eriksson’s proposals or to understand the root of the problem has so far been nil.
No points of view get to mess with sport, perhaps.
The always-deft official, Bjorn Eriksson, presented his first interim report in April 2012, under the title Less Violence for the Money. In addition, some 30 ideas for clubs’, the police’s and prosecutors’ work included proposals for stricter laws on the prohibition of masks, refusal of access to venues and the establishment of national hooligan records for those who are not welcome.
In March 2013 came the final report, More Joy for the Money, and if one had previously not been worried about sport, it was certainly the case after. Based on extensive questionnaire research and a number of interviews in football and hockey, the report conveyed an image of a sector in which violence, threats and harassment are commonplace.
The proportion of people affected by such is: over 40 per cent among CEOs/club managers/sporting directors, 35 per cent among referees, 30 per cent among security guards/stewards, and 10 percent among players. Only a fraction of the incidents, 13 percent, was reported to the police and only 40 percent were reported to the immediate supervisor at work.
Bjorn Eriksson sees a similar trend among the mass media to sweep the threats and violence under the carpet. The result is a sport characterised by an underground culture, and partly controlled by criminal networks. An alternative title of Eriksson’s investigations could have been More Tattoos for the Money.
The criminality is not limited to the stands, but equally present on the field of play. It is manifested in the admiration for violent tackles and play-acting to win favours from the referee, in the thoughts about revenge and a never-ending need to ‘gain respect’. Young hockey players encounter the culture at a young age. Television viewers encounter it in the Allsvenskan (Sweden’s top football league) as well as in the Champions League. The higher the level, the more tattoos.
In society in general, it is known as an inverse relationship. As the British prison doctor, Theodore Dalrymple, says in the book Life at the Bottom of Society:
“The cause of criminality among the white population of England is perfectly obvious to any reasonably observant person, though criminologists have yet to notice it. This cause is the tattooing of the skin.
A slow-acting virus, like that of scrapie in sheep, is introduced into the human body via the tattooing needle and makes its way to the brain, where within a few years it causes the afflicted to steal cars, burgle houses, and assault people.
I first formulated my viral theory of criminality when I noticed that at least nine out of ten white English prisoners are tattooed.”
The statistical relationship between crime rates and body painting is stronger than that between crime and any other single factor, with the possible exception of smoking. Dr. Dalrymple is jesting of course, but no one can dismiss his observation from the prison service. Worthy of note is that criminality’s stigma from the bottom of society is a marker of high status in European football.
Take a look at the cover of David Lagercrantz’s bestselling autobiography I Am ZlatanIbrahimovic. The star’s back is tattooed almost down to the belt line. The tattoos are effective and professional, but also reinforce a semi-criminal image from a tough childhood in the Malmö suburb of Rosengard.
A child from a broken home, Zlatan stole bicycles to pass the time, he was tormented by hunger because the fridge at home was often empty, and he was schooled in an environment where there was a danger of ”giving in” and where the driving force was first and foremost revenge.
I have nothing against Zlatan Ibrahimovic as a human and a technical player. He is probably the best football player Sweden has ever produced. He has carried his stratospheric idol status with both honour and humour. But in places he still confesses to sharing the tattooed brotherhood’s values:
”No one recognised me, not my buddies, no one. I became boring, bland, and you should know that ever since Malmö FF I’ve had one philosophy: I run my own race. I don’t give a damn what people think and I’ve never felt comfortable with authority. I like guys who run the red light, if you know what I mean. […]I always drive like a maniac. I’ve gone 325 km/hr in my Porsche Turbo, leaving chasing cops behind. I’ve done so many fucked up things I barely want to think about them. ”
The line-ups for the final of the Champions League were similar – when it came to tattoos – to a parade from Spandau, Wormwood Scrubs, Kumla or another of Europe’s prisons. Zlatan describes his momentum as follows:
“Tattoos became like a drug for me. I wanted something new all the time. But they were not any spurs of the moment. Everything was thought through. Still I had been against them at first. Thought it was poor taste or something. But I was tempted. Alexander Östlund helped me getting into it, and the first tattoo was my name, from hip to hip in white. It’s only visible when I’m tanned. It was mostly just a test.
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Then I became more daring. I heard the expression ”Only God can judge me”. They could write anything in their papers. Scream anything at the stadium. They still couldn’t get to me. Only God can judge me! I liked it. You have to walk your own road, and I had those words tattooed. I had a dragon made as well, because in Japanese culture the dragon is the warrior and I was a warrior.
I had a carp done as well, the fish that goes against the current, and a Buddha-symbol that protects against suffering, and the five elements, water, earth, fire and all that. I had my family tattooed; the men on my right hand, right standing for power, dad, and my brothers and later the sons and the women on the left, left is where the heart is, mom, Sanela, not the half-sisters who had broken off with the family. It felt obvious back then, but later I would think about it, who is family and who isn’t? But that was later.”
The investigator, Bjorn Eriksson, often speaks of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ supporters as the ‘black’ and ‘white’ teams. Obviously, police officers and security guards must have the tools to stop troublemakers who throw objects on the field, or light Bengal fires with masks on their faces. Likewise, the sport itself must get better at drawing up boundaries for the criminal element – such as The Firm Boys of AIK.
When the final whistle sounds in the match between black and white, it is after all the culture and the ideas that are crucial. Theodore Dalrymple again:
“Worse still, cultural relativism spreads all too easily. The tastes, conduct, and mores of the underclass are seeping up the social scale with astonishing rapidity. Heroin chic is one manifestation of this, though no one with any real knowledge of heroin and its effects could find anything chic about either the drug or its effects. When a member of the British royal family revealed that she had adopted one of the slum fashions and had had her navel pierced, no one was in the least surprised. Where fashion in clothes, bodily adornment, and music are concerned, it is the underclass that increasingly sets the pace. Never before has there been so much downward cultural aspiration.”
A stairway must be cleaned from the top, as Bjorn Eriksson said when he presented his report on sports-related crime. Specifically, it is about the sport movement’s leading representatives taking clearer responsibility. Ultimately, it is about the values ??that pervade popular culture, the mass media and school.