What can we learn about football from Marseille? From Gerard Depardieu, the controversial actor? Or better yet, Robert Taro, the equally controversial mayor of Marseille, whom he portrays in the Netflix series of the same name? But let’s take a look at ourselves first. In a small town, Darmstadt, far away from Marseille.
And yet both have something in common: a football arena. Bundesliga here, Ligue 1 there. In our town there is a lot of football going on, and it’s more bad than good. Every two weeks. Hours beforehand, a large police force drove into the back of the forest, where the opposing fans were smuggled into their block. Blue lights flash through the streets, emergency vehicles, motorcycles. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of officers are on duty.
Why is this only like this in football?
When it’s over, everything’s the other way around. The opposing fans are now escorted out of their block again, like convicts on a tour of the yard, back to their buses and onto the highway. Then the all-clear and closing time for the emergency services. They drive away, flashing blue.
That’s how it is in our little town, that’s how it will be in the new year, here and in the other stadiums in the Republic, and in Marseille it won’t be any different, a little tougher. It will remain with a lot of blue light.
A lot of news from the stadiums and their surroundings, from Bengalos and firecrackers, from fans fighting, from police operations, and the always same questions: Why is it like this in our stadiums? And why is this only the case in football? Why not in handball, basketball, football, not in ice hockey, tennis, not even in boxing?
Only in football. You got used to it, to the constant aggression, the constant blue lights, the high security zones.
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In “Marseille,” the Netflix series, right-wing radicals and other criminals want to take over the football club. Depardieu, sorry: Tarot, the mayor, is fighting against them. He explains to his son why: “Marseille is a mixture,” he says.
“There are people in this city who only meet at the stadium; the rest of the time they live separately in completely different worlds. Workers, clerks, bankers. Rich, poor. Whites, blacks. They all have only one thing in common, only one reason for coming together: their football team. Without them, this city would explode immediately.”
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
So the arena is not just a high-security wing, but also a melting pot of social interaction? Nice words. She speaks tarot in the stadium on the way to the VIP room. There is no black person to be seen there, and there are no poor or working-class people either. If blood flows outside, champagne still flows here.
