Violence în Sports

Football hooliganism is unruly and destructive behaviour — such as brawls, vandalism and intimidation — by association football club fans. Fights between supporters of rival teams may take place before or after football matches at pre-arranged locations away from stadiums, in order to avoid arrests by the police, or they can erupt spontaneously at the stadium or in thesurrounding streets. Football hooliganism ranges from shouts and fistfights to riots in which firms clash with bats, bottles, rocks, knives or guns.In some cases, stadium brawls have caused fans to flee in panic; some being killed when fences or walls collapsed.In the most extreme cases, hooligans, police, and bystanders have been killed, and riot police have intervened with tear gas, armoured vehicles and water cannons.

In 1964 more than 300 football fans died and another 500 were injured in Lima, Peru in a riot during an Olympic qualifying match between Argentina and Peru in 24 May.In Argentina, over 70 people died in 1968 when crowds attending a soccer match in Buenos Aires stampeded after youths threw burning paper on to the terraces. In 2002, the Argentine government announced emergency security measures because the soccer violence continued, with three people dead and hundreds injured in two weeks. The government announced stiffer penalties for offenders, including longer jail sentences for possession of firearms or fireworks at stadiums.In 2005, a footballer, Carlos Ezcurra, was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer, when rival fans were rioted during the Primera B match between local Mendoza rivals San Martin and Godoy Cruz.Argentina also deals with one of the most dangerous hooligans group, which is River Plate's side Los Borrachos del Tablon.

A 2002 investigation into football hooliganism in Argentina stated that football violence had become a national crisis, with about 40 people murdered at football matches in the preceding ten years. In the 2002 season, there had been five deaths and dozens of knife and shotgun casualties. At one point the season was suspended and there was widespread social disorder in the country.Every major and minor soccer club in Argentina have Barra brava groups, some of whom are violent.Fans in Brazil join in organized groups often considered criminal organizations that differ in many aspects from European hooligans.