Wednesday, February 16, 2011

An Overreaction, No?

I was looking at some YouTube videos yesterday, and stumbled across this one. English soccer has a yearly tournament called the FA Cup, and it is the world's oldest soccer knockout tournament. Not only the pros take part but hundreds of amateur teams get a shot at winning the trophy.

The Cup reaches Round 5 this weekend, and the behemoths known as Manchester United were drawn against a squad called Crawley Town, who play in the Conference, which is the fifth division of English football. It's a classic matchup of David vs. Goliath. (And coincidentally, both teams are nicknamed the Red Devils.) Crawley is second in the Conference, and 93 places below ManU in the overall English rankings.

The Crawley club put together a video to support their boys featuring fans of the club. And a lot of controversy erupted when a fan on the right of the following video (wearing a baseball hat) made gestures of an airplane, and an airplane crashing that upset many United supporters. (Back in 1958, eight United players were killed in a plane crash in Germany after a European Cup match.)

After the video hit YouTube, Crawley Town took action, banning the offending fan for life from attending any matches, and now the police are looking to arrest the fan on charges of "suspicion of harassment, alarm and distress." Arrested? Really? That seems like a gross overreaction to me. (And why didn't the video makers catch this? Guess they don't know too much about ManU.) Banning the offender for life from the club's matches sounds like severe enough punishment to me.

Well, judge for yourself. The clip is titled: "Crawley Town FC FA Cup Song, Complete With Scumbag." Remember to look to the right, the guy with the baseball hat:

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