A look at the destructive celebration of the England faithful in Frankfurt after their win against Paraguay.

At first the crowd on the corner very much resembles an official World Cup fan party. People are standing around drinking, talking, singing. It appears to be a peaceful group of Englishmen. Maybe 300 of her majesty’s finest milling around a street corner bar as the sun drops behind the central train station in Frankfurt, Germany.

They’re sipping on beers the way men who have been out in the sun watching football all day have been known to and singing songs that make them feel good about their country. The sign above the bar reads, “Karaoke Disco Friday and Saturday.” It’s more dancing than destruction.

Then an arm comes up, out of the crowd and grabbing onto a “garage” sign about eight feet off the ground. It’s a skinny kid, maybe 17, with an England jersey and pants ending around the knee. He’s pulling himself up, his feet kicking out to get a lift off of the hands pushing him upward. The crowd cheers, their own hands in the air.

He climbs to an overhang above the bar on the corner and starts running around, ducking out of sight. He’s probably not old enough to vote in England, but he is a hero to the English watching him, a national icon. He’s ducking out of sight to grab the footballs stuck on the ledge and now he holds one above his head.

Holding the power of the moment in the movement of his hand, he tosses the ball in the air and the able-bodied below him compete for the privilege of meeting it with their head on the way down. He throws the several balls that he has collected from the overhang and the focus shifts from him to redirecting the balls back into the air. When a ball rests on the ground it is picked up and drop kicked toward the goal of an open window on the fourth floor.

Someone says, “It’s going off,” and laughs. The scene is mayhem and becoming destructive but it is not malicious yet. At the other end of the city block an imposing line of police enforce boundaries to the party, hoping the tinderbox of drinking English ignited by a victory over Paraguay will burn itself out.

The bar that’s being climbed and torn down to retrieve soccer balls is doing a brisk business selling beer to the guys violating their city block.

Someone pulls a glass display case over. It crashes at my feet and shards of glass rain off my jeans as I jump away. The violence has escalated from a casual disregard for any property that gets in the way of the party to a moment of aggressive destruction. The crowd cheers this development but remains content to knock each other down and kick balls around.

A song breaks out, first the shirtless kids in the center of the crowd singing with a raised fist and a pump in the air, then an exponential spread through the rest of the crowd and all movement yields for the song. Its lyrics are somehow dirty and catchy without being intelligible and I am an outsider looking in through the lyrics of a drinking song.

The song ends and the paused scene continues: The balls bounce off shop signs and make windows shudder, young men scrap to feel the satisfying impact of leather on leather.

None have gone in the open window but every time one comes close it is accompanied by an intake of breath and a disappointed, “OH!” The balls collect on a different overhang and the teen once again scales the building to retrieve them. Within moments they’re stuck on the other side.

Someone lifts a kid up. He’s draped in a white England jersey and a red hat, maybe eight or nine years old. He’s lifted onto a pair of shoulders; they’re going to send him up onto an unstable overhang over the street to retrieve the balls.

From the churning, shirtless mess in the middle of the street, one of the ringleaders rushes to the man with the boy on his shoulders. “No no no no no. You don’t want to do that mate.” He lifts the boy down and points to someone else to go up and retrieve the balls. It is surprising method in the madness.

An officer explains the situation on camera as the police change shifts. He says that they are recording the crowd and will move in to arrest them with SWAT gear later. Those taken into custody will spend the night in jail and, depending on the view from the video, some may face three to four months in the German judicial system.

There is an American Christian rock band playing outside the train station, 100 yards from the bar. “When you lift the banner for England you lift the banner for Jesus Christ,” they say between songs. Christ is working overtime down the street behind the stage now, parachute size England flags hang between lampposts announcing the home neighborhood of different groups of fans. They stand proudly with their beer next to their banner.

“Eng-land! Eng-land!” The second syllable of each word drops in pitch. It’s the only part of the song that I understand and I’m mouthing the words with the crowd.

Then, suddenly, there is a ball flying in the air and I’m in the perfect position to meet it on the way down. Its arc will bring it curling toward me about a foot off the ground and I can see the fourth floor window in the same glance. All it would take is a quick shift in balance and a microsecond motion of my leg; a quick flick of the foot to feel that brilliant connection and send the ball sailing straight through the window into an open, probably unoccupied apartment. The crowd would cheer and I would jump in the air, a member and momentary hero of the raucous fraternity. And although I don’t join the mayhem and violence; I don’t stoke the fire and add momentum to a celebration that will probably be tame compared with things to come; I don’t hype the crowd and give it a reason to sing and pull displays from the wall; as the ball drops in toward where my foot could meet it, I very much want to.

We start as always in the epicenter of the hooligan world, Poland. The country’s football association chief Michal Listkiewicz is upset that Germany has singled out his country’s thugs as the worst of the worst.

“I do not know why we are being singled out. Look at Holland or Italy — the problem is much worse,” he told Reuters in an interview. “The English also have a history of causing lots of trouble when they travel abroad. What goes on around Polish stadiums is not above the norm for European football.”

Obviously Mr. Listkiewicz does not read the Hooliganwatch™ reports, which might explain why the Germans are keeping an extra close eye on their neighbors to the east. It is also worth noting that Poland itself is concerned enough about its miscreants to send police to aid the German authorities.

One country that has been flying under the hooligan radars is Switzerland. Everyone knows that Swiss men are more into milking cows than causing bloodshed, but there are some in the country that have been banned from traveling to Germany. That’s a pity. It is always good to have neutral hooligans on hand for a rumble.

The hooligan ban is largely working in England where 3,000 losers have been told to hand over their passports during the World Cup. All but 200 have complied, meaning the violence and mayhem will stay in England. Good news for Germany. Bad news for this hooligan-scared church.

One British hooligan has gone on television to let the world know he is going to Germany. “I don’t want to fight someone on the street just ‘cos he’s got a certain shirt on. I want their top lad, their main hitter, their hardest boy. Toe to toe. I don’t want to be a better person. Since I was a youth I’ve just done what I’ve done,” explains Douglas Naylor.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is giving some practical advice to its citizens who are in Germany on how to avoid hooligans. “Improve safety awareness… avoid ‘football hooligans’ and after games, please leave the venues as soon as possible,” the statement said. “Avoid lingering in places where football fans congregate — especially areas with bars. If (an incident) occurs, please follow police instructions and leave.”

Message to hooligans: please don’t harm the Chinese. Their pirates allow us to watch football games on the Internet. Thank you for your cooperation.

Our Hooliganwatch™ interns will continue to monitor the streets of Germany throughout the tournament for any signs of the beginning of the end. They’re getting college credit for their internships so we don’t feel too bad if they end up on the losing side of a chainsaw battle.

We start as always in Poland where President Lech Kaczynski has vowed to launch a “fight without mercy” against his country’s miscreants. “We will wage a ferocious battle,” said Kaczynski, using language that hooligans can clearly understand. Included in that ferocious battle are plans to tighten the border between Germany and Poland in advance of the World Cup.

If any of those crazy Poland hooligans do make it across the border and if they are arrested in Hamburg, they can look forward to spending some time in police car depots that have been converted to hold people arrested during the World Cup. The accommodations may not be great, but considering the prices of hotels in Germany this summer it might not be a bad place to crash.

In more sobering news, there have been some in Germany who have suggested that traveling to some parts of the country isn’t advisable for people of color. Uwe-Karsten Heye, head of anti-racist organization “Gesicht zeigen” (”Show face”), says: “There are small and medium-sized towns in Brandenburg and other places where I would recommend that nobody with a different skin color go. They would possibly not leave there alive.”

German officials have responded to such suggestons by saying that they are going to take a tough stand against racism and won’t tolerate hate crimes. They say that people of all nationalities will be welcome throughout the country.

We can’t end on an depressing note, so thankfully we have our friends at The Onion who write about how American soccer fans are preparing for the World Cup by staging a series of practice riots.

Even in the dark and dangerous offices of Hooliganwatch™ we can appreciate good satire while we prepare for the end of the world.

Meanwhile, a shop in Kent, England has caused a bit of an uproar by selling t-shirts bearing the slogan “Always Kick Ahead – Any Head” alongside England football strips. Paul Alcock, a former referee in top flight football and now manager of the shopping center where the store is located said: “Can you imagine people turning up for the World Cup in Germany with T-shirts like that on?”

Those things would be selling off the racks if they were translated into Polish.

Finally, Dutch scientists are working on a sound system that can neutralize racist chanting in football stadiums. The system is still being tested and so far no clubs have signed on to have it installed. Said one of the researchers involved with the project: “If you frustrate an audience by making it impossible to chant, you need to be very careful how you channel their frustration. If they stop chanting but start rioting out of frustration, then you’re worse off.”

As you can see, even the best intentions can go awry in the rough and tumble world of Hooliganwatch™.

“What gives me headaches sometimes is thinking about how we going to keep our own 10,000 hooligans in line,” said Michael Endler, head of ZIS, Germany’s office for sports information.

Meanwhile, Iran is fearful that its team could be the target of a terrorist attack during the World Cup. Iranian officials are afraid that dissident groups that oppose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will target the team. Speaking of Ahmadinejad, the pressure is mounting on German politicians to ban him from attending the World Cup, especially since some neo-nazi groups plan to march in his support. Stranger bedfellows have never met.

Now that you are probably depressed, we’ll let Mr. Endler have the final words by telling you what he plans to do after the World Cup is over and he no longer needs to think about hooligans. We would encourage all of you to do the same thing:

“I am going to sit in my garden, light up a big cigar, pour myself a stiff cognac and read a book that has absolutely nothing to do with football,” Endler said.

Here are some charming thoughts from a 29-year-old bent on destruction:

“We will come together for our national cause,” he said of the World Cup. “We think only of beating the ‘hools’ from Germany first — because we hate them — and the ones from England because they have the reputation of being the best hools, because they invented it. If we beat them we will be considered the best.”

He added: “If the English do not want to fight we will go looking for them and steal their flags, their scarves and their colours. And then we will burn them.”

Here’s hoping that the Polish police pay a visit to that guy’s house before he starts World War Three with a burnt scarf.

Meanwhile, the Polish idiots will be disappointed to learn that more than 3,000 English idiots have been banned from traveling to Germany and won’t be allowed to take part in any of their reindeer games.

They also will be bummed to read that the Czech Republic is starting to get tough on crime and that the German police are going to be all business during the World Cup.

As you can see, it has been a busy week at Hooliganwatch™ headquarters, a sure sign that either the World Cup is aproaching or that the apocalypse is coming. The two events may not be mutually exclusive.

As these stories indicate, hooliganism shouldn’t be taken lightly. But that isn’t going to prevent us from offering this suggestion from our buddy Bense in Dortmund.

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At first, we need to found a Federation International de Hooligan Association, short FIHA. It’s gonna be a subsidiary of the FIFA.

The hooligan matchups need to planned a little in a advance, just because the sponsors need to know how awesome the matches are going to be. Okay, let’s do it like that: Close the VIP stadium parking, and on the free space, build a cage. Let’s say 20×30 Meters and 5 meter high. The match-up will be decided by 5 single games, so all the fans who seek violence can join in. Overall, it’s a good method to keep 110 men busy for an hour. We decriminalize it and everybody who wants to get his ass kicked will be served.

Game time is 5 minutes or whatever teams manages to get all of their own hools on the opponents base line. We play it regular, 11 against 11. The refs will be some specialy trained policemen in Judge Dredd uniforms. By the tickets sold and the adverts placed, the tax payer doesn’t need to waste any money on the policemen and regular police will be barely needed anymore for the real game next to the cage. The refs take care that if someone is down, he rather stays down or is not being kicked. They take care about the proper usage of weapons (no knives, no baseball bats, NO CHAINSAWS!) like ladders, chairs and trash cans (the ones you know from wrestling). There will be vdeo replay of harsh fouls and tough decisions, fouls will cost gained meters. The winners will be rewarded with the golden crown of thorns after each game, and the loosers must patrol around the stadium, hand in hand, with pink ballet skirts.

And the best: The fans who have gotten no ticket for the stadium can enjoy this cage matches. Seating capacity would be around 2000-5000 seats if you’d ask me. And remember, the first step of really addressing this problem is professionalizing it and making it fit into a capitalistic scheme. Why letting them beating the living s**t out each other for free when you can make money with it?!?!?! If my advice will is probable, we might have “professional hooligan athletes” within the next 10 years, now that’s something you can write on your business card. But make sure not to quit your day job by now, I don’t know if the FIFA board will approve my considerations

The article also mentions that there might be as many as 20,000 hooligans in Poland alone and that there will be many Poles traveling to Germany because their country does not have television rights to broadcast the games.

Anyone care to explain why the games aren’t being shown in Poland? I might resort to violence too if I couldn’t watch the World Cup.